


Dying Embers and Warm Paws

by feistymuffin



Series: Accidental Alpha [1]
Category: JackSepticEye (YouTube RPF), Markiplier (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Multi, Newbie Werewolf Mark, Pack Dynamics, Public Sex, Sexual Content, Werewolves, werewolf roofies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-08
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-29 14:01:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 46,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11442378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feistymuffin/pseuds/feistymuffin
Summary: Every story has a moral—a central idea, a message to get across. They're usually pretty simple, too. Don't lie. Treat others as you would want to be treated. Put your seatbelt on. Call your mom more.What's the moral when you're in the wrong place at the wrong time? What are you supposed to learn when your life takes an abrupt left turn without your hands being on the wheel? What's the message supposed to be when an anonymous werewolf decides to gift you with bodily dental impressions?





	1. Attuning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AdorabloodthirstyKitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdorabloodthirstyKitty/gifts).



> So first of all, GalaxyGhosty had absolutely everything to do with this fic. Every morsel of praise to her for helping to inspire the idea, and then fuelling so much of this story by inspiration alone. Second of all, Adorabloodthirstykitty had boatloads of support and inspiration for me during the sluggish blegh period I got into in the middle of writing this monster, so this fic is dedicated to them. Thanks so much to both of you!!!

_Tuesday_

The nurse removes the needle and presses a cotton swab to the crook of Mark's elbow, instructing him to hold it there for two minutes before moving away with a vial of blood in her gloved hands and a "Be right back" tossed over her shoulder. He slouches back in the chair, bare-chested—his shirt had been beyond repair from holes alone, never mind the blood—with his shaking fingers holding the cotton swab in place, and looks at the small poster beside him on the wall.

_Are you having trouble maintaining control? Do you have sudden shifting issues that are interfering with your everyday life? Have you been turned without a pack to lean on? Do you feel like you're not the werewolf you should be?_

_We can help!_

_Alpha Marzia and Felix Kjellberg, Werewolf Rehabilitators_

The page is covered mostly by the print, but underneath them is a picture of two people, a thin, tall blond man and a pretty brunette, both smiling wide. At the bottom of the page there's a small federal seal in the corner stating that they're certified for lycan rehabilitation. Along the bottom there are tear-away pieces with a phone number and email address written on them. Some have already been torn and taken. Mark sighs and tears one off, pocketing the paper. 

It's a moot point now—no turn is curable—but Mark can't help feeling bitter. His choice was taken. An irreversible decision had been made for him. He doesn't have anything against werewolves; the ones he's known fleetingly in the past have all seemed like pretty good people. But that doesn't mean he wanted to jump on the werewolf bandwagon.

Being human since birth and all, his experience with lycanthropes has been limited to having just a handful of people come and go in his life with the genetic trait of transformation. He's never had a person he could call his friend that could shapeshift, but then again, it's not like Mark travels in their social circles very frequently. Werewolves and humans tend to keep to themselves, with the exceptions of fairly rare intermingling groups and individuals. According to the poster on the wall across him in the small curtained cubicle he's situated in, the government census most recently lists the human-to-lycan ratio at 19:1, which is apparently a 7% increase from last year's census. 

There had been a section about werewolves in some of his high school subjects, some specialized courses available for them when he went to college (he took none of them) but not a single inkling about what being a were is actually like. Would it have hurt anybody to just put the information out there? Like a _How To Be A Werewolf_ pamphlet or something every year in his mailbox? Maybe that's asking a bit much, but Mark's feeling more than a little let down by his government. The government who, by the way, inflicts mandatory blood tests on anybody bitten by someone of a temporarily furry nature, mainly because it's illegal for a werewolf to bite someone without consent, so every unwanted bite is recorded and treated as an assault by the police—dental evidence, saliva and blood samples and everything. And if the werewolf that bit you is an alpha? Well, the only way to confirm lycanthropy before the turn starts is by blood tests.

The ER nurse—her name tag dubs her Mona—comes back empty-handed but still gloved, stops at his right side and lifts the cotton swab off his arm. Mark looks down and he expects it in a 'my luck isn't good enough for the guy not to have been an alpha' way, but what he sees still surprises him. There's no remnant of the needle's poke, no broken skin. No pain or soreness, he notes belatedly, hollowly. 

"How we doing?" Mona says. 

Mark swallows the lump of fear sitting in his throat and shrugs. "I'm not really sure, to be honest."

"Can I give you my medical opinion?" He nods. "The tests are a formality at this point," Mona tells him, tossing the cotton swab in the biohazard tub labeled "LYCAN". "You're displaying rapid healing, which is obviously a confirmation that you're becoming a werewolf. The pinprick you should've healed, but the bite wound on your shoulder shouldn't have, not yet. Your regeneration shouldn't be this fast until at least your second day of exposure." Mark's hand reaches to his shoulder, rubbing over the unmarred skin. "With healing like that it probably means you're an alpha, not a beta or omega." She peels off her gloves and tosses them in the garbage then looks at him seriously. "We're keeping you for observation until the tests come back. It'll only take about half an hour, and then we'll go from there. Do you need to see someone, ask questions?"

Numbly Mark nods again. He doesn't have the first clue how to be a werewolf. Werewolf. Werewolf. He's a werewolf. _I'm a werewolf,_ he thinks hysterically. The word is foreign and hilarious and impossible, but it's unavoidably true. "I'm a werewolf," he says, and it sounds just as unbelievably hysterical out loud.

Mona pats his arm before stepping back. He feels a twitch of irritation at the touch. "Just hang in there. The tests should be quick, we're not too busy right now. I'll send a therapist your way, too." She leaves again, pulling the curtain halfway across its rail and mostly hiding him from view. 

Slowly Mark leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands. A werewolf. He's a werewolf. He had just been on a late night run around his neighbourhood, nothing out of the ordinary for him. On his way back towards home Mark came across a man in a hooded sweater on the dimly lit sidewalk and thought he was out walking too—up until the point the guy grabbed him, snarled in his face with bloodshot eyes and huge, predatory fangs and bit down on his shoulder like a holiday ham. 

Mark supposes the one good thing in this scenario would be that he punched the guy in the head so hard it knocked him out, and he stayed out until the police got there and took him away. In that time, Mark hadn't thought to wake him up and ask him what his deal was, because it was pretty clear with chompers like that that he was a rogue or at least deranged werewolf. Besides, Mark had been too busy freaking out to ask him much of anything. 

He's starting to get warm all over, something Mona and another ER nurse Jake had warned him about. No longer than four hours until the first symptom, they had said, and then it starts. Heat, then aches, then fire, then migraines, then worse aches, then outright pain, then more fire, and then you're done. It's all very scientific. The complete change, he's told, can take anywhere from three hours to almost a day. 

Mark checks his watch, sighing hard. It's been forty-nine minutes since he was bitten. An ambulance had shown up with the police, taken photos of his wound after they cleaned it and brought him to the ER—despite his delirious protests that he could walk and get himself there just fine with his shoulder gushing blood—and right into Mona and Jake's waiting hands. 

An alpha werewolf. Mark rolls his forehead against his fingers and tries to recall his textbook knowledge about werewolves. He knows that they operate on pack hierarchy but whether it's the same as their wild, nonhuman counterparts, he has no idea. He knows that alphas lead a pack of werewolves and are the most high-ranking wolf in the group, often the most volatile. Any werewolf has the possibility of going "rogue", which basically means their mind gets to be more rabid wolf and less normal human, but it's most likely in bitten and turned humans. Alphas are the only werewolf capable of turning a human with their bite. And of course, it's plain and common knowledge that they're all stronger, faster, and have incredible senses and reflexes. Werewolves, even the weakest ones, are stronger than the strongest possible human by a landslide.

He sighs again, spearing his hands through his hair, drumming his fingertips across his hot scalp. And... that's it. That is all he actually knows about werewolves. Pretty damning, in a time such as this.

The curtain draws back in a sharp sound and Mark's head snaps up. A man shuts the curtain behind him, offering a smile and Mark feels a physical, unshakeable tensity across his shoulders at being closed in with a stranger. The man keeps his distance like he's aware of this, leans a hip against the counter with the medical supplies on it and gives Mark a compassionate look. "Hello, I'm Mr. Price. I'm a counsellor here in the hospital for lycan bite victims. I was told you had some questions about your new lifestyle?"

Mark rubs a hand down his face with a caustic laugh. "God, where do I start?"

*

Mark doesn't feel very enlightened by the end of his visit with Mr. Price, and he doesn't remember a single thing the man told him. Though, that may have more to do with his turning process suddenly kicking up into high gear somewhere around the seventy-minute mark than his lack of retention. 

Mona—who had returned moments earlier with the positive, unnecessary results of his tests—and Jake come back when Mr. Price calls them in, and Mark is taken to a private room and put directly into the bed there.

To distract himself from the increasingly uncomfortable aches in his bones, Mark tries to recall what Mr. Price told him but everything is jumbled together in the heat cloaking his body, making his thoughts stuttering and sluggish. A steadily blurring Mona is on one side of the bed, Jake on the other, and they're strapping his ankles and wrists to the sides of the bed. They secure his waist and thighs, and put a final strap across his chest.

"You're not going to shift right now," Mona leans down to tell him kindly. The fear in his eyes must be easy to read. "The turn doesn't involve any shifting, it's just your body reacting to and accepting the bite. We're securing you because you'll be getting increasingly stronger, and it's for everyone's safety. Including yours."

"His fever is spiking," Jake reports, a hand on his boiling forehead. 

"He's an alpha, the regular drugs won't do him any good," Mona replies grimly. "And with the fever this high he'll burn everything else off too quickly." 

"We can put him out with a drip, at least," reasons the other nurse. 

She sighs. "I'll go confirm with Dr. Aymes." The Mona blur walks away.

Mark slips in and out after that. The only constant every time he fades back in is the pain, the heat. The stabbing, crushing pressure on every bone in his body. His skull feeling like it's creaking with the effort of holding together against his broiling brain. Sweat dripping into his eyes, making them sting. His own hoarse, wordless cries that sound so far away, like someone else's voice entirely.

It reaches a peak—everything, all at once. Like a firebomb going off, his insides ignite and burn and smoulder until there's nothing left of him but the sensation of fire. After a while the flames waver, faltering and then dying down before snuffing out completely, leaving him sweaty, gasping and shaking, so lost that he's not actually sure which way is up. 

He feels a hand on the overly sensitive skin of his arm, and he sleeps.

*

_Wednesday_

Before he's really awake, before he even opens his eyes, Mark hears a low, constant, almost-not-there arhythmic thumping. He inhales and smells hospital, sweat, maleness and artificial cheese. He smells something else, too—a sour tinge in the air that doesn't... feel the same as the other scents. Sour, and tangy. Almost salty. But it's different, like a breeze brought it into the room instead of being in the room itself. 

Mark's still inhaling, sniffing at the air when he opens his eyes and looks around. He's in the same hospital room and the clock on the wall tells him it's been over eight hours since he was bitten. Wade and Bob are at his bedside, a bag of Cheetos in Wade's hands. His eyes take a long time to focus on them, and then he says, gravelly, "Hey, guys."

"Well, look who's back in the land of the living," Wade says cheerfully, crunching a Cheeto.

"Did they tell you?" Mark asks them drowsily, blinking. By his lack of pain, it's undeniable now that the turn has run its course. "I'm a werewolf. A fucking alpha."

"We know, buddy," Bob says. He hands Mark a glass of water, which he drinks greedily. "They called us—thanks for telling us we're your emergency contacts, by the way—and told us everything. Some guy just bit you last night?"

"Was on a run," Mark mumbles, wiping his mouth. "I thought he was another jogger. Then he just grabbed me and bit me. And of course, he had to be a rogue alpha. So now I'm a werewolf. God, I'm a werewolf." He sets the glass down and flops a hand onto his face. "At least they caught the jackass. There was something wrong with him, I think, because I hit him in the temple and he just went right out."

"One of the cops said the guy was hopped up on some werewolf drugs, probably why he attacked you in the first place. Sounds like a punch to the face would've done the job," Bob says with a laugh. "The police said they'd call you if they had any more questions."

Wade frowns at him. "How you feeling?"

Mark sighs, runs his hands through his limp hair. "Honestly?" He shakes his head a little in disbelief. "I feel like a million bucks. Like I'm just—like I'm ready to fucking _go_ , you know? Really... intense, in a way." And it is intense, like a buzzing under his skin, itching, rubbing, telling him to get out, run and keep running. He instinctively looks for a window to see outside because he knows (How? How does he know?) that the moon is out right now, waxing gibbous. Three days until the full moon.

"And mentally, how're you doing there?" Bob wonders. "Are you okay?"

"As okay as I can be, I guess, considering," Mark replies with a shrug, forcing himself to relax. The thrumming in his skin doesn't lessen even slightly. He can still hear the not-there-everywhere thumping, and every minute crinkle of Wade's Cheetos bag. He can smell the strong scents of salt and musk from his own sweaty skin. Constant reminders that he's no longer the person he was. Bitterness creeps into his chest like blood seeping through cloth. "It's not what I wanted, yeah, but..." He shrugs again but his shoulders sag defeatedly. "It's not like there's any going back now. At this point I'm not even shocked that my luck is this bad."

Wade and Bob laugh. His friends are so understanding of his pain. It's not like it's Mark's fault that Murphy's Law was practically invented for him. Life and fate are cruel, cruel bitches and they are making Mark's time on the planet very challenging. His current situation, case in point.

"Har har, my misfortune is very funny," Mark snipes. He sits up. "Am I allowed to go?" He pauses, deflating a little. "I need to call work about this and get my lycanthropy leave started, I guess. Damn."

"The nurse said you're cleared, you just have to sign out," Wade tells him. "And they gave us the necessary paperwork for you." 

As Mark scoots out of the bed to sit on the side, Wade hands him a significant stack of papers. "Goodie, my intro to werewolfism."

"She said there's lots of stuff to read, things you have to do and change since you're a werewolf now, identification and medical stuff mostly. And some numbers are in there for you to call if you have questions and concerns," Bob explains. "And that since you don't have a pack, obviously, you should start some control classes? There's numbers in there for that too."

"Oh, wait..." Getting to his feet, Mark digs into his jeans pocket and pulls out the little slip of paper he put there earlier. He reads the small print above the email address and phone number. _Alpha Marzia and Felix Kjellberg_. "I think I've got that covered, actually."

Wade pats him on his still-bare shoulder and something in him screams _NO,_ flaring hot and angry between his lungs, a fierce urge to rip Wade's hand off his skin. It's so sudden and so forceful that Mark actually flinches. Before he can act on the impulse, Bob slips off his hoodie and hands it to Mark with a weird look.

"I don't think I'm going to be a very good werewolf," Mark mutters. He tucks himself into the sweater, shaking off Wade's hand and feeling immediate relief from the bubbling anger.

"Don't sweat it," Wade says easily. "Just think of it this way, Murph: the next time your luck maims you, it won't be nearly as inconvenient."

*

His boss isn't necessarily happy to hear about his sudden lycanthropy, but he doesn't really have a choice about granting Mark leave from work to get himself sorted out before he can come back. The last thing an employer wants is a newly-turned, likely unstable werewolf in the middle of a room full of people. Add in the fact that he's an alpha, and there's no chance he's going back to work until he can prove his control. _At least I don't have to pay for the classes myself_ , Mark thinks with some optimism.

Mark calls the phone number on the scrap of paper from the poster and gives his name to sign up for classes. The class is constantly ongoing, a jump-in sort of situation with the stages of control varying from person to person, which he wasn't expecting. The girl on the phone, Amy, assures him that the current class is all beginners at the moment, and Alpha Marzia is very involved and caring with each of her students. Their satisfaction rating is 100%, he's told pleasantly, and for most werewolves it only takes a few weeks to gain complete control.

When he mentions he's an alpha that causes her a bit of pause, but she recovers quickly and insists that Alpha Marzia—he doesn't miss how she stresses _alpha_ a little more this time—is able to work with anyone. She informs him that the next class is tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. and goes until 3 p.m. with half an hour in the middle to have lunch.

After he hangs up Mark lies back on his couch, staring up at the popcorn ceiling and trying to place the source of his thrumming, restless anger. He'd already had two close calls just getting from the hospital to his apartment. Once when a man on the bus bumped his shoulder pretty hard as he passed by and Mark's first reaction was to, of course, snarl in the man's face like a severely pissed off dog. It took Bob and Wade hurriedly explaining to the man that he had only turned the night before to get him not to call the police. The second time was when he got into his apartment lobby and felt so trapped in the small space that he backed into a corner and growled at the very mention of getting into the elevator, until Wade told him to _just take the stairs, god damn it_.

And the thumping. No matter where he goes, it's there. So quiet that it could be background noise, but whenever he focuses on the sound it gets a little louder. Almost there but not there entirely. It only stops when he's completely by himself, after Bob and Wade leave.

Now he's sitting on his couch, smelling every odour in his small apartment like everything is laid out nicely before him on the coffee table. The sweat-body-linen-musty smell of his mattress and bedding, the strongest smell in the whole apartment. The burnt-smoky-heat-hungry-food smell of the kitchen. (Mark calls it "hungry", anyway. He has no idea what the smell is, if it's actually what hungry smells like, because he has no idea if that's even possible. It's just what it feels like when he smells it. How the hell can he associate hunger to a smell? How is that a thing?) The dusty-musty-air smell of the couch and most of the living room. His own body, smelling so much more than what he's used to smelling like. He sniffs his armpits—musky, male, sweaty, and just a hint of something that's somehow... hot, intense, with some kind of roughness to it like the smell itself is wild. It makes him think of running. He hadn't smelled anything strongly enough on the way home—unless the overwhelming smell of urine in the public bus or the smell of smog in the streets count, and the constant swarm of different people's smells _everywhere_ —to think that a werewolf was nearby, or at least near enough for him to smell clearly. But if he had to guess, he'd bet that that's what _eau de loup garou_ smells like. 

Mark sighs, pulling his phone out of his pocket and dialling his brother Tom. May as well get it out of the way. He still has to call his mom after this, too.

*

_Thursday_

When he gets to the right place, an older four-storey brick building with large front windows displaying a nice seating area—a waiting room?—inside and bordered on either side by similar but slightly differing buildings, Mark's early by at least fifteen minutes. He would've waited to leave but he was not staying in his apartment any longer with just himself and things to smell, people to overhear doing any number of things in the apartments around his. He took the long way here to whittle down the time, walking through thin alleys and down side streets—ignoring every single revolting thing he smelled on the way—since he has no car and wasn't about to use public transit again. He's been up half the night itching with restlessness and something else under his skin like an extra layer—tingling and curling and urging him to do something. He doesn't know what that something is. He's not entirely sure he wants to. It feels barely contained and very wolfy, but that's about the extent of Mark's knowledge on the subject.

He lingers outside the door—helpfully designed with the words _Kjellberg Rehabilitation_ —for a few minutes, nervously pacing and twitching at the under-skin feeling, before a skinny bleach blonde with dark roots and big brown eyes opens the door and stands in the doorway. 

"You look like you could use a cup of coffee," she says simply, gesturing him inside. She turns and goes back in, propping the door open with a wooden slat on the floor. She smells like hot cocoa and nice perfume, and a little bit like buttered toast.

"Did you have toast for breakfast?" Mark asks, instead of a normal question or greeting, as he follows her at a pronounced distance. Inside there's a short hallway from the door into the waiting area visible from outside, and a reception desk in the middle of the back wall along with two doors, all of which she passes to go to the coffee machine sitting in the corner for anyone to use.

The woman just laughs and goes about preparing the coffee. "I did, yeah. Good sniffer so far. You been working at it?" She pauses and glances at him. "Hm, actually, I don't think I've seen you before."

"No, uh, I called yesterday," he says, lingering near the hallway. "I'm Mark."

"Oh, the alpha," she says, nodding. "Yeah, I spoke with you. I'm Amy." She gives him an assessing look, leaning back against the counter holding the coffee machine. "You seem like you're smart, so I'll give you a little heads-up. Don't even think about challenging Marzia. She's put bigger, meaner, and scarier alphas than you in their places, and on their asses."

"I don't even know how to respond to that," is what Mark goes with, since "Huh?" doesn't seem elaborate enough.

Amy squints at him like she's waiting for the punchline to a joke. "How long since you were turned?"

Mark lifts his wrist to check the time even though he already knows it's about ten, and counts backwards. "A day and eleven hours. Since I was bitten, anyway," he adds. Rubbing a hand over his hair, Mark sighs, "I finished the turn later in the hospital. They knocked me out for most of it. I was done sometime in the night, and woke up yesterday morning as a werewolf."

"You're bullshitting me," Amy says at once. Mark shrugs, looking away uncomfortably. "Oh my god, you're totally not bullshitting me. No way. Not even forty-eight hours? So you're not even done attuning yet."

"I guess? I don't know what that means," Mark says, getting a little grumpy. That could also be the itch, heating up under his skin, making him irritated for some reason. He feels like... like he's inside someone's bedroom, invading someone's private space. Like he's somewhere he knows he shouldn't be. He shifts his weight uneasily.

"Hold on, I have to—hold on," Amy says, and then bolts out of the room and behind one of the doors, the left one, that lead further into the building. 

He hears muffled noises and voices muttering and looks around, but there's no one else with him in the room. He glances at the door, firmly shut. He can't make out any words from the noise, and before he can consider trying his hand at werewolf eavesdropping the door opens again, Amy leading the way and another woman following behind her. 

At first glance Mark recognizes her as the woman from the poster. He opens his mouth to speak but then a tidal wave of smells hit him and his jaw shuts sharply. Hot-power-wolf-female-tea-cinnamon hits him from (who he assumes is) Marzia's direction and he inhales reflexively. When he exhales it's a growl, low and warning. The feeling of invading privacy spirals upwards into a 'fuck I'm lying in a stranger's bed and they can see me' sort of feeling and he's intensely uncomfortable, with the unerring sense of seriously encroaching on someone's very personal turf. His shoulders are hunched and he's crouching down before he can stop himself, backing away.

The two women barely react, expressions stony and bodies still, but Mark acknowledges on some level how weird he's being, how odd it is to growl at strangers like they're threatening him just by standing there. He hits the wall and it jars him out of his trance a little bit, having his back to something solid. At once he slaps a hand over his mouth and the growling rumbling in his chest slowly tapers off into nothing the longer he tells himself _how fucking weird that is, stop it_. He forces his body to straighten even though everything in him, every ounce of his being is telling him not to expose his belly, and bites the inside of his cheek until the urge to get on all fours and roar at the women goes away.

The silence sits idly, and when it's obvious neither of them are going to speak first, Mark mutters through his hand in the most normal, non-growly voice he can manage, "I am so sorry. I don't—I don't know—"

"It's alright," the brunette says, completely neutral. "Amy said you were powerful, but it looks like you're relatively well-contained, too, for a wolf who's still attuning. My name is Alpha Marzia Kjellberg." Her face softens. "Something tells me you have a lot of questions."

"Probably too many," he admits, lowering his hand. 

Marzia laughs quietly. "Well, people will start arriving soon. I would recommend that you take a seat and be as patient as you can, and we'll see how you do around the others." He must look terrified, because she continues, "Don't worry. If anything happens, I'm here to help you. Nothing you do reflects on you, especially during the first few days of this life."

"Okay," he says, once he thinks he can talk. Slowly Mark makes his way to a chair and sinks into it stiffly. Marzia nods at him and disappears back behind the door on the left. Amy brings him a cup of black coffee, leaving it on the table beside him as opposed to handing it to him, and then sits behind the desk and does something on the computer, looking studious.

As Mark sips at scalding coffee, one by one all sorts of different people begin showing up, bringing new assortments of scent cocktails, all tinged with the hot-musk-wild smell that denotes a werewolf. A tall, broad and muscled man with a goofy smile. A short, blonde voluptuous woman. An elderly man who looks like more of a badger than a wolf. A pregnant woman, petite and skittish. Two young men that came in separately, and seem way too cocky for Mark's taste, are standing together talking and laughing occasionally. Mark watches them the most. The pair makes him exceptionally uncomfortable—especially how they keep looking at him and grinning. Everyone, a total of eight people, in the room except Amy has a wary eye on Mark—he can feel their gazes like physical things, pressing into him, but he doesn't know why. There's a sour tint to the air, almost cloyingly sweet, and salty. Like in the hospital, it doesn't have the same substance as other things he's smelled but it holds a significance that he can't shake. He's not sure if his situation or the smell itself is responsible for the rolling anxiety that's internally suffocating him.

Marzia comes through the door on the left again, and every wolf in the room turns to her. "Welcome, everyone," she says pleasantly. "As I'm sure you have all noticed, we have another member here." She waves a hand towards Mark, casual and simple, but every head swivels to him sharply like he just screamed out loud. He's (mostly) sure he didn't, so what's everyone's problem? "I don't think I have to refresh anybody on common etiquette, so if everyone is ready?" She swings the door open and holds it, gesturing the wolves inside. 

Mark waits, unable to have his back to anything but a wall or an empty room, and slowly the people in the room file through the door. When he's the last Mark quickly gets to his feet and hurries over and through the door, immediately shifting himself so he's backed against a wall.

The room they're in now is a glorified living room without windows, the only furniture being a large and random assortment of armchairs, arranged in a rough oval shape in the centre of the room. There's a single door in the side wall, near the back of the room. Marzia shuts the door behind them and the sound is synonymous to a cell door slamming closed, for all the comfort it offers Mark. Again, he waits until everyone is seated in a chair except Marzia before walking as calmly as possible to the nearest available chair and lowering into it. 

The chair on his right is empty and the pregnant woman sits to his left. When he glances at her she's regarding him with mild horror in her expression, hands cupped almost protectively around her rotund stomach.

"As usual," Marzia says, walking into the centre of all the chairs and pacing idly, "we'll begin with the rudimentary shift exercises. Everyone, please practice, and if you have any questions don't be shy." 

That seems to be all everyone else needs, and a majority of them begin focusing on their hands, intently. Some open their mouths wide and hold fingers to their top or bottom cuspid teeth, or to the top of their ear.

Marzia sits in the empty chair on his right and smiles, close-lipped. "It's Mark, right?" He nods confirmation and she continues, "What everyone is doing right now is trying to access what's called a rudimentary or localized shift on their hands, their teeth, or their ears. As a humanoid, these are the only things we can alter without shifting completely—claws, fangs, pointed ears. That's it. Focusing on isolating and shifting anything else is pointless, and just a waste of time. So, let's have a go." 

Mark gives her an incredulous and slightly panicked look. "That's, uh—Can y—I know it's not what we're doing right now, but can you tell me something about werewolves? Anything. I'm sure I know almost nothing about them."

"Why don't you try to shift your claws, and I'll talk," Marzia offers. "Ask questions as they occur to you, you can just interrupt me if I'm in the middle of something."

"Um, okay. That... Okay." He frowns down at his hands, perfectly human. Rounded fingernails and everything. He has no idea what he's doing, what is actually entailed in trying to shift, so he just concentrates on his hands. 

"Werewolves," Marzia begins beside him, "are pack structured. Omegas are the low-ranking members in a pack. They're not the whipping boys or, basically, slaves of the pack like they are for wolves in the wild. They're just lowest in the pecking order. They have almost no input if there's ever an issue that comes up and needs resolving, but a good alpha will hear their opinion and consider its merit like any other packmate. They're typically the weakest but the fastest out of the three ranks, nimble and spry and great evaders, excellent for things like espionage. Physically their healing factor is the slowest of the three, and they tend to run smaller and slighter in frame than the average werewolf, and as such are sometimes regarded as lesser. That," she says fiercely, making Mark glance up from staring at his fingers, "is old, tired, and backwards thinking. No wolf is lesser just because of pack rank. It only labels their position, not their worth. It's like looking down on foot soldiers because they hold no power over anyone else. It makes no difference to their character."

Mark knows what most people say about werewolves—to fear them almost by default, to be cautious because they're unstable. Betas? They're a problem if something happens, but typically they're not troublemakers. Alphas? Powerhouses. Leaders. Angry and hostile and unpredictable. Use extreme caution. Omegas? Less of a threat, sometimes too shy to even warrant suspicion, but not worth many people's time because according to the general human public—who _clearly_ know the most about such things, not being lycans—they're unimportant by werewolf standards. It's considered rude, as a result, for people—humans, anyway—to ask a werewolf's rank, because more often than not the answer defines how that wolf is seen afterward.

He stares back down at his fingers, back to concentrating, and Marzia continues, "Betas are basically the average citizen for a werewolf, average enhanced senses, average speed and strength, et cetera. They hold a vote in pack matters, can be promoted to an alpha's First or Second, and typically they mate with other betas. 

"Alphas." She breathes out a slow breath. "They have their own brand of stigma to go with the title of leader. Their fear factor is highest in the world--more people are afraid of an alpha werewolf than anything else. They heal extremely fast, they're the strongest and most powerful, usually bigger, too. They have a depth of assertion on others, especially omegas, that almost seems unfair, to have such an advantage. Their attacks do more harm to betas and omegas; wounds that they inflict heal slower on other wolves, and even wounds on humans heal a little slower. As a result everything, every living creature fears them. In this world, there is no such thing as a benevolent alpha in the eyes of the human public, with scarce exceptions."

Marzia leans back in the chair, crossing her legs primly and adjusting her skirt. "The population varies slightly depending on how many turns and births happen per year—the birth rate is usually pretty steady, but the same can't be said for turning bites. On a global scale betas make up the majority of werewolves. Alphas are about six to seven percent of the total population, and omegas are anywhere from fifteen to twenty percent."

_Jesus, only six percent for alphas?_ Mark thinks bleakly. _So, about one in twenty people is a werewolf, and about one in seventeen werewolves is an alpha. Jesus. Murphy hit me hard this time._

"Alphas and omegas usually mate together but it's not unheard of for an omega or alpha to mate with a beta or their own rank. Having said that, only heterosexual pairs can breed, just like humans, but all pairs can be mated. Your mate," she continues over Mark's curiously confused look, "is the person that you meet and fall in love with that makes you the most of who you are. They fill a part of you that no one else can. When you meet your mate for the first time, it may not be obvious that they're your other half. Alphas tend to have stronger senses about who their mate is—mine were quite strong—but you may not notice it until you know them better. Once you do know them, you'll start acting more possessive, protective. As an alpha this is stronger, and with a mate it will seem like everything they do is dangerous. Your need to be near them and touch them will be paramount, the need to protect them will be all-consuming. But, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it."

_What the hell am I supposed to take from that?_

"After the first twenty-four hours of your turn, your attuning—which is the process of your being merging with the wolf's new presence in you—will start to slow down and finally stop after a few days, at which point you will be at your strongest and fastest, your peak condition." Here she frowns, her mouth pulling down heavily. "Your first full moon is going to be awful. There's no way to sugarcoat that. Until your first moon when you shift for the first time you won't be able to shift fully into a wolf, but you can still access your rudimentary changes." She sighs, pushing her hair back from her eyes as she leans forward, looking Mark in the face. "Your first moon will be here, which is something I insist on if it's possible. We basically lock you in the panic room with me, and I ride out your first moon with you. It's, so far, the safest method I've found." 

Somehow Mark doesn't think Marzia includes her own safety in that statement.

"Anchors," she says, gesturing for him to continue focusing on trying to shift his claws, "are like a grounding point for your control. Your anchor is your port in the storm, your safe place, your thing that will save you when you think you're lost. It can be an emotion, it can be a person, it can be a concept. An anchor could be a mere dream or idea, like your future. Most importantly it is something that, in that very moment of stress and lack of control, will take you back from the edge and give you the solidarity and the peace to come back to yourself. Your anchor lives here—" she reaches out and presses two fingertips into his chest, over his heart, and when he gives an involuntary, jerky growl she smiles, "—and nothing can touch your anchor. You can be without one, but you will find it much harder to maintain control and focus when you're battling against yourself, and sometimes even when you're not."

_Bit early for that_ , Mark thinks to himself wryly. His control hasn't even been found yet.

"You will have likely noticed by now, but your sense to the moon is very strong. You'll always be able to tell when it's out, when it's set, whether it's waxing, waning, gibbous, halved, crescent, new, full. During full moons the pull is strongest for obvious reasons, and you will feel it physically as a humming in your body and a twitchiness to move and be active. It can be remedied by movement and distraction, but ultimately the best way to battle the pull of the moon is to shift—once you know how. You will also have heightened emotions and your temper will be shorter. Halves are usually points of transition, emotionally and mentally. You may notice your demeanour changing occasionally at these times. New moons are times of tranquility, a calming breath. It's a good time to practice shifting or exercising control, when the volatility of the full moon isn't coercing your emotions as much, and it's when wolves are at their most introspective."

"You sound like an astrology clipping in a magazine," Mark can't help but snort. He's surprised when Marzia chuckles, too.

"It's not far from the truth," she says dryly. "Lunar horoscopes are often accurate, but it's challenging to interpret what the moon tells you, if She even wants to speak to you at all."

Mark quirks an eyebrow. "She? The moon isn't—"

"Oh, so now you're the expert on lunar studies, hm?" she says, lips spread in a grin.

He smiles, nodding his head as if to say, _Fair point_. "So, the moon is a she?"

"It may take you a while to accept it," Marzia informs him. "That She is real, as real as you or me. Many wolves have called on Her for guidance when they've struggled or felt fear, or any number of things. The moon is in no rush, though. Today won't be the last time that She watches over you, I bet."

"Watches over me," Mark repeats slowly.

"Even as we speak," she says simply. She studies him for a long moment. "She sees the need in you, the bitterness, the disorder. With help She can guide you to a place of peace with your wolf."

Mark nods instead of voicing his thoughts, that Marzia is a little bit loony, and he ignores the fact that she listed the top three things that he feels at any given moment since his life was ripped apart by sharp teeth. Anyone could've guessed those things. It's not like Mark was being secretive.

"Your nose is your best weapon, aside from your instincts," Marzia continues breezily. "Both of which you should always hear, if not always listen to. Your instincts will never steer you wrong. Your nose can pick out the emotions of those around you, along with all smells in your area. Embarrassment, anger, fear, disgust, love, sadness, hatred, worry, happiness. Lots of emotions and feelings have smells. In time you'll learn to associate the smells with the emotions, but for now it's probably just a background smell that you can't identify."

"Is hunger a smell?" Mark asks, and her gaze falls on him so quickly that he feels stupid for having asked.

"You smelled hunger?" Marzia asks, eyes narrowing.

"Yes?" Mark hesitates. "In my kitchen. Burnt things and food and hunger. I think."

She hums, tapping a finger against her mouth, then asks, "What else have you been able to smell?"

"Um, at the hospital, like a sour tang? Almost putrid, I guess. Sour, a little bitter and salty. And here, another kind of sour smell but it's sweeter, grossly sweet. A hint of salt. Pungent."

"The first one is worry, or concern," Marzia says instantly. "Understandable, considering your circumstance. And the other is fear. I can smell it too. It's potent."

"Fear," Mark repeats, eyebrows up. "But I didn't—"

"You and I are the only alphas here," Marzia says calmly. "And humans aren't the only ones unjustly afraid of every alpha they see."

Mark looks up to the werewolves around them and every head in the room quickly looks down from staring at him, eyes pointedly averted and expressions shuttered. Even the two cocky young guys glance away before their faces return to the usual overconfident sneer. Every one of them is afraid of him. Every single one.

"I would never—" Mark begins worriedly.

"Their instincts don't know that," Marzia says gently. "They only see a threat, the biggest possible threat to them. You are extremely dangerous to anyone who isn't an alpha, especially if you're trained in combat at all. Just like when you first saw me, even being an alpha yourself, it's an instantaneous instinct overdrive to defend and protect yourself, even if the threat isn't actively hostile."

"When I came in here, I felt like I had walked into a stranger's bedroom. Like I had invaded someone's privacy." Mark glances over at her. "Is that like, alpha auras clashing or something?"

Marzia smiles. "You're very close. Alphas, when they own property or territory, leave their scent there. It's an automatic thing that happens over time. Other wolves do it too, but not nearly as strong. I've been here for over a year so my scent is prominent. Being an alpha, coming across another alpha's territory is pretty upsetting physically, and coming across the actual alpha even more so, as you found out."

Mark sighs and looks down at his hands again. He doesn't know if he should even keep trying to make his claws come out, at this point. Someone—humans, other alphas, threatened betas and omegas—might attack him automatically just because of the potential danger he presents.

Marzia sets her smaller hand on his and while the contact makes the heat under his skin flare with warning and the insistence to defend himself, it also soothes him. 

"Now that you're caught up on the basics, I'll be addressing the class, but don't hesitate to ask questions. For now keep trying to shift your claws. Your teeth or ears might be easier, but it's harder to know if you make progress since you can't see them." She stands and goes back to the middle of the chair circle.

Mark spend a good three minutes staring down at his palms hoping for a fucking miracle as Marzia paces around, studying each wolf's attempts at partially shifting until she's seen everyone. Either they're having just as much trouble as him, or Mark is surrounded by fellow fresh-off-the-tooth werewolves, though he doubts anyone here is as newly turned as him. 

Marzia comes to a stop, waits until she has everyone's attention and then in a blink, her features have changed. Her ears are pointed at the top where they should curve. Her hands have developed wide, sharp claws that curve at the apex of each finger in place of fingernails. Pearly fangs gape in her open mouth. Then in another half-moment she's perfectly human again. "Visualize fire burning in you, running through you—I see those looks and yes, it feels just like the turn. Visualize it in your veins. The fire pushing the change into your hands, down your fingers." As she walks around she holds up a hand, fingers splayed, and shifts only one finger at a time. "Until you learn to call on it at will, you'll familiarize with the sensation of shifting by doing it this way." Marzia catches his eye as she starts pacing again and she gives him a brief, clawed thumbs up. 

He doesn't shift at all, try as he might, and eventually Marzia lets everyone go for half an hour to eat something. Mark sits on the curb outside without eating—he ate about half his kitchen before he left that morning, he'll survive—and listens to the sounds in the neighbourhood around him. He stares at his hands, flexing them, trying to shift.

For the afternoon section of the class Marzia does smelling exercises, gets them to identify different scents, locate hidden things on the first floor—which for this part they have free reign of, and the only thing keeping anyone from stealing or peeking at personals is the fact that the owner is an alpha that would kill them three ways to Sunday. At the front desk Amy is completely unperturbed by a rampage of werewolves all around her. Even when one of them gets too close to her, like the two young men that insist on flirting heavily with her, she doesn't smell at all like fear. She looks more amused than anything, and sends them both packing with irritated scowls.

Next Marzia gets them all to try to lie to each other, and catch each other's lies by listening to the liar's heartbeat. _Heartbeats. The not-there-but-always-there thumping is heartbeats?_ Mark wonders. When it's his turn to focus on a terrified fifteen-year-old boy who looks like he's about to urinate at any moment under his eyes, Mark hears his rabbity, concerningly fast heartbeat ba-bumping in his chest. It's much louder than normal with Mark listening specifically to it, and it's almost reassuring to listen to, in a weird way.

Three o'clock hits and as soon as Marzia dismisses them the other werewolves almost make skid marks in their haste to get out as fast as possible—all but the two guys whose names he never learned, who saunter out while grinning at Mark. He frowns after them, but lets it go. 

Mark lingers by the reception desk—Marzia asked him to hang back so they could discuss his first moon—where Amy sits, clicking away at something. "You're not a werewolf," he says, because she doesn't have even a whiff of wolf scent to her.

"And you must be related to Captain Obvious," she replies sweetly without even looking away from the screen.

_Guess I asked for that one,_ Mark thinks ruefully. "Why aren't you a werewolf?" he asks instead.

"Because," Amy purrs, giving him a saccharine smile, "I already have one time of the month, I don't need two to worry about."

He chokes out a laugh and her smile turns genuine. "I can get that, I guess. Have you ever considered it?"

She looks at him for several seconds, brown eyes deeply scrutinizing before she offers a light shrug of her thin shoulders. "All the time. I'm surrounded by them daily. My step-sister-slash-boss is an alpha—my alpha, actually—so any time I want I could get the bite. But I think that's why I'm in no hurry. I know the option isn't going anywhere."

Marzia enters from the back room, shutting the door behind her and coming up to them, eyeing Mark with amusement. "Well, nobody died. Not so bad, hm, Mark?"

He lifts a hand, distinctly human. "I didn't change at all, but yeah, nobody died. I managed not to freak out in a corner all day so it's already better than what I was honestly expecting."

"While you're getting accustomed to everything, just be careful around humans," Marzia says. "You won't hurt them, I don't think. For your second day your control is impressive, but you're not flawless and you can still scare the piss out of someone. Humans aren't nearly as careful as werewolves about random accidental touching, which might aggravate you. And they probably won't be able to recognize an alpha on sight, so they won't know to be careful around you. Most humans can't even identify a werewolf unless they stand out. Relax," she adds easily, when he begins to feel the barbed edges of panic, "once you're done attuning the urges will be easier to handle."

Mark sighs heavily, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. "I'm not much of a 'thrive in public' kind of guy anyway." He pauses. Footsteps approach from down the sidewalk and stop at the front door, opening it. 

"Marzia, darling," a man's voice calls out from the hall, and then a blond man is in the room, walking easily towards Marzia. It's the man from the poster... Felix? With his arrival comes a waft of musk-wolf-peppers-male-tea, and Mark shakes himself a couple times to get rid of the quaking anger settling in his now-tense muscles—what Marzia explained earlier as a base instinct reaction to an unknown werewolf approaching him, worsened by the impending full moon.

The man bends and presses a jovial kiss to the bridge of Marzia's nose and she silently lifts her face. He bends and pecks her mouth with another quick kiss, then they both turn to Mark. The blond's expression becomes surprised for a moment and he stares blankly, but then his expression dissolves and he smiles. "You must be the accidental alpha Marzipie texted me about. I'm Felix, her mate and beta."

Mark bites his tongue on the teasing comment for the nickname and muses, "Accidental is one way of putting it."

"Historically it's much more common for an alpha to be born than bitten, by a factor of sixteen," Amy says, chipper, and stands. "And statistically, only three percent of all werewolf bite victims that turn are alphas. So it's pretty appropriate. The chances are so low that it practically was an accident."

"Thank you, Amy," Mark grunts. She beams at him then elbows him in the ribs. He grunts again but, to his surprise, doesn't feel the angry burst of heat at her touch. He covers his smile and pushes her shoulder gently, but Amy still stumbles from the contact. _Be very careful when handling humans,_ Mark notes to himself with a grin.

Marzia studies Felix for a moment and then drifts to the reception desk, fishing out a form from a small pile. She gives it and a pen to Mark. "Fill that out, just some information stuff. Then we'll talk about the full moon." Then she grabs Felix's shirt sleeve and hauls him into the back room, shutting the door firmly behind them. 

Mark glances at Amy. "Do you have any idea what that was about?"

"I don't pretend to understand her, despite knowing her for two decades," Amy replies with a snort. "But sometimes Felix gets these... feelings. Pings. Zaps." When Mark just stares at her blankly, she sighs harshly. "Like, poof. A feeling. An oomph. He basically has werewolf super intuition. Gets little blips on his radar when he goes certain places or sees a certain face. Congrats, blip." She grins.

"Does he ever know what these blips mean?" Mark asks, refraining very hard from rolling his eyes. He sets the paper down on the end of Amy's desk and starts filling it out. "Or are they just aimless pings?"

"It's a toss-up, I guess," she shrugs. "If it's significant usually it comes with a bit of a push in one direction or another. Or so Felix says, anyway. Sometimes I think he's actually bullshitting twenty-four-seven and just gets it right as often as he does purely by chance."

"Werewolf super powers are like, a thing, then, if he isn't bullshitting all the time," Mark says, and he shouldn't be surprised but he is. The amount on information he's gathered on werewolves in the last five hours trumps everything he'd known previously by a staggering difference, and their list of abilities just keeps growing. "Like werewolves needed any extra additions."

Amy laughs brightly, half-covering her mouth to unhelpfully quiet the sound. "I'll keep an eye out and let you know if I come across anymore werewolf super powers."

Mark exhales through pursed lips. "Every second I'm less convinced by the scientific spiel they handed us in school about werewolves," he muses, "and more convinced that every textbook about werewolf physiology should just have "FUCKING MAGIC" written in it repeatedly."

"Or they could do a section on the beat-the-odds case of an accidental alpha," Amy adds, amused.

Mark glowers at her. She just grins back. He goes back to his form, and after another minute Marzia and Felix come back out of the room with a pair of poker faces so good that Mark wants to take a day trip to Vegas and clean the fuck up. 

"So, the full moon is in two days," Marzia says without preamble. "I'd like you to be here. Of course, if you have other arrangements then that's alright."

"I have nowhere to be," Mark says hesitantly, "but how many others will be here?"

"I'm taking the betas and omegas to our other building in town for their first moon," Felix replies. "It will just be you and Marzia here, for everyone's safety."

As an alpha, she's least susceptible to any wounds Mark may inflict on her during his first, most awful transformation. And while Felix isn't as invulnerable as his mate against the omegas and betas, he looks confident that he'll be alright. Mark's relieved to have the best possible chances for not hurting anyone who can't defend themselves fairly against an alpha.

His relief shows, if he's properly reading the pleased smiles on their faces. 

"So," Amy says, sounding businesslike as she takes Mark's finished form, "the day of the full moon is as important as the night. Mostly because the moon will be risen during the day for this one, but also because no matter where the moon is, as long as it's full you'll feel it. The pull is definitely stronger when it's above the horizon, but it's still bad enough when it isn't." She sits, his form in front of her, and begins typing rapid-fire. "This moon will be officially full by eleven a.m., so be here by ten or earlier."

Turning to look at Marzia and Felix, Mark quirks an eyebrow. "Officially full? There's an exact science to this now?"

Felix smiles wryly and Marzia bites her lip trying to hide hers. "Not a science, precisely," Felix muses. "Amy is someone who hears the moon pretty well, so I'd listen to her when she says to be here by ten."

"My life is being dictated by a giant rock satellite and its interpreter," Mark sighs. Their laughter does nothing to stop him from thinking humourlessly, _What else could there possibly be to surprise me now?_

*

_Friday_

Mark is elbow-deep in a basket of clean laundry when his phone rings, Wade's name on the call display. He tucks it between his shoulder and cheek after picking up. "Hello?"

"Hello, yourself," Wade replies without preamble. "What are you bringing tomorrow for snacks? Bob says he wants Sun Chips, the weirdo, but I'm not buying them and Bob claims he bought all the junk last time so he won't buy anything this time. Have I mentioned that I hate Bob?"

"A couple times," Mark laughs, folding a pair of pants against his chest. "And Sun Chips are delicious, you're the weird one."

"Spare me your altruistic defense of gross whole grain foodstuffs. What are you bringing?"

Mark opens his mouth to reply but abruptly stops. Saturday is their day for video games, junk food and delivery pizza, a complete day of fights for the Player One controller and scrapping over the last slice of Hawaiian with extra cheese. The idea that he'd ever be unable to attend had never crossed his mind, because nothing has ever been important enough to compromise his Saturday nights. It's a ritual that Mark has grown fond of over the years, a weekly waste of time with his best friends, but with the recent shift in his priorities the upcoming Saturday holds a new significance for him now. "Saturday is the full moon."

"So? We have a crisis here, Mark. Bob is hating on my compromise of buying a jumbo bag of Munchies, and he's completely ignorant to reason." Wade's tone implies that he's less than impressed by Bob's healthy attitude.

"Wade," Mark stresses, "Saturday is the full moon. I, a new werewolf, can't be there."

There's a brief silence, then Wade blurts, "Oh." It's a soft sound, full of sudden realization. "Right. Right, man, sorry, I forgot—"

Mark grimaces at the stab of loneliness that lances through him. "It's alright. But, I can't go, man. Sorry." He shuts his eyes and adds in a trembling afterthought, "And I don't know when I can see you guys again. For... safety reasons."

"No, no, that's fine, Mark," Wade rushes to say. "Don't—don't worry about it, okay? You just get yourself sorted out. We can still text and call until you... uh, until you get... uh..." Wade trails off pitifully, unable to find the proper words.

"Habilitated?" Mark offers, cracking a smile. He folds a shirt, the last thing in the basket, and tosses it on top of the clean, folded pile.

Wade laughs in his ear and Mark pictures his goofy "I'm an idiot" grin splitting his wide mouth. "Yeah, yeah, habilitated. We'll keep in touch until the next time I can slug you for stealing my last can of Dr. Pepper. Which you are an asshole for doing."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Mark muses, chuckling at Wade's grumpy snort. He sobers as he adds, "I'll... see you when I see you, then."

"Don't be so dramatic, Murphy," Wade says dryly. "I'll talk to you later. Text me after your full moon fiasco, I want to know what you get your kill count up to."

"Ha ha," Mark retorts laconically. "Bye, Wade." He taps the red button and smothers the sick sense of abandonment that settles in his throat. No one is deserting him, but it certainly feels like it. It feels like the human world, his old world, is shrinking around him, pushing him outside of its bubble and neglecting to make him fit again, instead getting rid of him altogether. The only thing left is the werewolf world, full of everything he knows so little about, everything he's never understood that werewolves are ingrained into. Lonely doesn't even begin to cover the shroud that lowers onto his shoulders, dragging his mood down like a heavy cloak.

As he stares down at Wade's contact picture, he wonders how long it'll be until he can see his best friends again. 

*

_Saturday_

"Ever heard of wolfsbane?"

Mark looks up from his book ("Bring something to do!" Amy had called after him as he left the day before yesterday) and frowns. "It's a flower, right? Purple, or something." When Marzia waves for him to elaborate, he says, "I see commercials about it on TV, mostly the scare campaign ones about wolfsbane-infused drugs and alcohols, how they're poisonous to humans and not to accept anything even mildly purple from strangers. Though, it should be pushing the idea of never accepting anything from anyone you don't know."

"At least the average human knows _something_ about it," Marzia chuckles. 

They're in the conference room, the room on the first floor with all the chairs, and Marzia has made a sort of blanket-cushion-pillow pile in one corner for them to lay in for the night. When he had asked about the panic room, she had replied simply, "You won't need it."

"What's wolfsbane?" he asks, tucking a finger in between the pages to hold his spot and turning his attention to her.

She smiles at him. "It's a flower with a few names, some of which you may have heard tossed around in conversation once or twice, even with humans. Wolfsbane, monkshood, devil's helmet, blue rocket, or most commonly, aconite."

Mark's eyebrows jerk up. "Aconite. That's a heavily controlled substance. Like, morphine level controlled, isn't it?"

Marzia nods. "Aconite is the common name for the beneficial drugs made by that little indigo flower, such as the few werewolf-specific, very addictive painkillers research has managed to develop. They likely used an aconite-based sedative when you were in the hospital. Wolfsbane, however, is typically the name given to the more sinister, purposely harmful, very illegal adaptions of it." 

She sighs, drawn out and tired. "There are hundreds of different species of flowers, all of which do something slightly different to your average werewolf. Some have been developed into painkillers and sedatives, useful things for when werewolves need medical attention. Some are paralytics, like the type in wolfsbane bullets that police officers use on rogues and lycan criminals. Others have been made into a range of powerful recreational narcotics--all of which, for the record, are extremely lethal in the slightest overdosage. Some strains of the flower have been best for infusing with liquor, which isn't terrible since there's no other way to get drunk as a werewolf. On those kinds it is very difficult to overdose before your body starts throwing it all up, but overconsumption of wolfsbane booze can still make you pretty damn sick." 

"If I had medical problems with drinking before I was bitten, what will happen if I drink now?" Mark wonders. 

"Any medical problem, physical abnormality, disease or unhealthy situation of any kind would be healed by the bite," Marzia explains. "So it wouldn't affect your ability to drink now. Though, I wouldn't try going to town on a bottle of Houndstooth for your first night out once you're habilitated." She smirks.

"Houndstooth?" he repeats. "Isn't that a pattern?"

"It's the name of a popular aconite whiskey," she informs him with a smile.

"What else do they make with wolfsbane?" 

Marzia's easy smile clouds over to be replaced with subtle, dark pain. "Poisons. A lot of illegal poisons. Most aconite is deadly to humans even in small doses, but a high enough dose from the right flower for werewolves... It's just death. There's no coming back, or healing. It shuts us down like it was made for it, hence its somewhat cruel name, wolfsbane. It's why it's such a highly controlled substance. It's also how humans have won a lot of wars against us in the past. That, and silver."

"Oh my god, silver is a thing too?" Mark groans, collapsing back into the blanket pile.

She laughs quietly. "Less expansive but yes, silver too. Weapons and bullets made from silver harm werewolves more, slow down the healing on wounds made by them. Prolonged contact with silver irritates the skin and in full shift, enough damage by silver may make you transform back into a human. In more recent years, various militaries have developed silver nitrate bullets, capable of poisoning the blood with a liquid silver compound inside the rounds. Silver nitrate isn't lethal but it will hurt like hell and make you very ill for at least a day, until your body can break it down and get rid of it."

"No wolfsbane or silver, got it," Mark says dryly, turning back to his book.

"How're you enjoying your first moon so far?" she asks him after over an hour of comfortable silence, eyeing him speculatively.

"Well, I still haven't been able to shift at all," he sighs, momentarily looking down at his nails and trying to push fire through his appendages, giving up after a few seconds, "despite the moon being at its strongest, and my wolfiness finally being attuned." He shakes his shoulders in an effort to rid himself of the uncomfortable tingling sensation there. "My skin feels like it's buzzing, and it's extremely irritating but not unmanageable." He feels the moon outside, serenading him in a sweet lilt, encouraging the hot rush of power to engulf him. "I just really want to run."

Marzia snuggles into the blankets, flipping a page of her magazine. "Then you'll probably shift soon. When you start to get super nauseous let me know. It'll be close then."

It's another two hours before he's dropping his book from shaking hands, rolling over onto his stomach with a harsh groan as his stomach rhythmically clenches, nausea crashing over him in gradual waves. There's a hand on his shoulder and he snarls loudly at it, at the presence of someone in the room with him when he's vulnerable, but Marzia doesn't say anything or rebuke him. She makes this noise, not a hum and not a purr, but somewhere in between. It reverberates in his shoulder where she has her chest pressed firmly, and it sits with him. Somehow it's just... comforting, and his unease at her being there diminishes slowly until she's rubbing circles into the small of his back while he dry heaves on his hands and knees.

Marzia leaves him briefly to get a pail and put it under his face, then resumes her back rub. Eventually he stops heaving and actually vomits, but it's been hours since breakfast so it's only bile. Mark throws up until his stomach is empty of even that, sweating from exertion, and spits into the pail with what little strength he has left. His skin is hot to the point of burning, his veins full to overflowing with fire, and vaguely he hears in a pause of purr-humming, "Push it where it needs to go." 

So Mark pushes, pushes and pushes and pushes until finally the fire in him moves down his arms, surfing through his veins and flooding him with the impregnable feeling of _changing_. Unquenchable heat bursts through his body like an explosion, all the way to the tips of his fingers and toes, and he's collapsing onto the floor, body shaking so hard he thinks he's going to fall apart, and then—

A breath, gasping, and then another. A hand on his shoulder, comforting weight keeping him tethered to reality.

Mark shifts his arm and it feels like it's not his arm anymore—it's the wrong shape and size, and doesn't respond the same as before. His whole body is full of ghostly echoes of what it should feel like, but doesn't even remotely resemble anymore. His eyes open and everything is sharply in focus, with bright colours and more light than he remembers, like someone turned up the saturation. He gets up, standing on all fours and it feels so much more different than kneeling, which was already weird. 

Marzia smiles at him; he sees her sitting next to him when he turns and looks for her. "You make a handsome wolf, Mark," she says, excited for him, _happy_ for him. He smells it rolling off of her like perfume. "But don't tell Fe I said so." She winks. He coughs a little in his non-human throat, the closest thing he can approximate to a laugh. "How do you feel?"

He rotates his shoulders, crouches and stands, flexes his toes, swishes his tail (He has a tail. He has a fucking tail.) back and forth. No pain, and no fire. There's some heat in his skin, thundering in his blood—telling him to run wild, to scratch at trees and dig up earth, chase small things and howl for his pack. A pack he knows he needs now that he's shifted, now that he can feel every single desire the wolf has. He needs it like he needs food and air, being an alpha. He needs companionship and family and belonging. And he needs... someone in particular. Someone that's just his. _Mate,_ his memory supplies, when he thinks back to Marzia's teachings.

Mark looks down at his hands— _Paws_ , he thinks with some hysteria—to see dark brown, nearly black fur coating strong, _very_ canine forelegs with ebony claws curving down and into the hardwood. Quickly he relaxes and the claw tips retract from the wood, leaving grooves.

"You're a natural," Marzia says beside him cheerfully. "Almost no aggression at all. You're fully conscious and present. And look how big you are! I mean, I expected you to be, you weren't exactly a tiny human. But even for an alpha, you've got some girth to you, don't you?" She pokes into his furry side and he growls, but it's on purpose and playful and the way she laughs makes Mark feel strangely pleased with himself.

Marzia leaves the room to dispose of the pail and when she comes back she coaxes him to lie on the blanket pile again. She joins him, laying close but not touching. "When you're feeling disjointed, or like you're floundering in one way or another," she says conversationally, "there's nothing like a nest to fix it. Put every piece of bedding you own in a pile on the floor and sleep in it, stay in it. Surround yourself with the peacefulness of your own smell."

She's right. Sleeping in blankets that already smell like him—and Marzia, but she's alright, somehow—is putting him at ease, making the hot boil of his wild blood something forgettable. His eyes slip closed but before he dozes off, he hears Marzia's amused, "Accidental alpha, sleeps through his _harrowing_ first moon. Unbelievable."

*


	2. Familiarity

_Sunday_

When he wakes up he's human, and relief doesn't begin to cover how Mark feels when he sees his own fingers and toes. Marzia is far too entertained as he stares down at himself for an uninterrupted twenty seconds after waking up, eventually catching the underwear she tosses at him to hide his very human bits—his clothes didn't make it through the shift in one piece, and he's beginning to see a predictable correlation between his clothes being destroyed and lycanthropy—and detangling himself from the blanket pile. She leaves before he has the chance to unintentionally flash her while trying to get dressed as covertly as possible.

Even though it wasn't the torture that he'd been anticipating, Mark doubts he'll be lucky enough to forget the feeling of shifting by the time it happens again. He tastes the bitterness of that truth as he thinks it, and swallows against the trepidation that festers in him. While freeing and invigorating, the shift was... painful and terrifying. _Fire._ Magma gushing through his veins, setting off a pyre within his body that chars him from the inside out. He's not exactly relishing the idea of doing it all over again, even if it's supposed to get easier every time like Marzia says.

_No use bitching about it,_ he tells himself with a sigh. He can't change what he is. He's a werewolf now. End of story. He can only adapt and evolve with what's thrown at him. 

As he scans the room he sees his phone on the floor by the blanket pile and remembers his promise to Wade, so he sends him a quick text, _Kill count: 0._

He gets one back instantly. _You are such a disappointment._

Mark snorts and replies, _You wouldn’t think so if I came to game night._

He follows the sounds upstairs, uses the door at the back of the conference room and takes the narrow staircase to the second floor where Marzia and Felix live. He walks in and finds himself in a big and open kitchen, Felix and Marzia kissing passionately against the counter. Mark clears his throat pointedly when he enters and they separate, switching to nuzzling instead.

"The alpha pup is here to ruin our fun," Felix pouts, burying his face in Marzia's hair as Mark walks over.

"This pup is going to kick your ass unless someone feeds him," Mark warns, ruining whatever effect his feeble threat had by wearily rubbing his eyes and yawning. He can smell the food already cooking anyway, and heard the sizzle of the pan before his foot even hit the bottom stair. He puts his phone on the counter in lieu of his nonexistent pockets.

"Oh, you're just adorable in the morning," Marzia coos at him and detaches from her mate. She cups a hand at Mark's jaw and he feels no guilt in growling emptily at her. But their bonding—because what else could it have been?—the previous night seems to have erased any fear she had over his self-control, because she just tweaks his nose and turns back to pull down a coffee mug for him. 

Felix nudges his elbow into Mark's bare side, half-focused on the hash browns, eggs and bacon he's frying. Mark's surprised, delightedly so, when Felix's touch triggers no fury in him. "The duds didn't make it, eh? Took me a while to remember to get naked before I shifted. I kept ruining my favourite shirts too, so you'd think I would have learned quicker."

Mark glances down at himself, dressed only in the pair of boxer briefs Marzia got for him. He shrugs and scratches his stomach, studying Felix's own bare chest and Marzia's t-shirt and panties. "I have a feeling body modesty is not something werewolves often have."

"By the look of things neither do you, so you'll fit in just fine," Felix chuckles. Marzia leans her head on Felix's shoulder and offers Mark a cup of coffee, wordlessly gesturing to where the sugar and cream sit on the counter. He neglects both and leans back against the fridge, sipping his coffee and soaking in the easiness of the morning.

Felix is just dishing up the food onto five plates when Mark perks at the sound of a door opening downstairs, footsteps, and then a door shutting. "Someone's here," he says sharply, looking at Marzia.

She's unconcerned, though, drinking her tea leisurely. "Mmm. The rest of my pack. Well, most of it. Signe was working overnight, she'll be late."

There are steps up the stairs, and Mark barely has time to consider the fact that he's incredibly underclothed to meet new people before the door to the stairwell swings open and Amy walks in with a slim, gorgeous man following behind her. They both pause in the doorway at the sight of Mark. 

The appreciation in their stares does very little to quell the embarrassment that heats his face, or the low-key rage at a stranger being thrust upon him. He sniffs reflexively and yes, the man is a werewolf—and he smells _incredible_. Suddenly Mark's body is throbbing with the need to be closer, his just-risen hackles melting into goop. The sudden about-face in his instinctual temperament has him reeling.

The man laughs, supposedly at the look of jarred confusion on Mark's face. Amy cracks a grin, too. "Damn it, did we miss a slumber party?" she wonders, taking in their states of undress. "I feel all left out, you guys. We waited up and everything."

"We didn't end up needing backup. His first moon was a home run," Marzia says with a careless shrug, pouring two extra cups of coffee from the carafe. "He just woke up, actually."

Amy and the newcomer give their alpha looks of incredulity as they wander into the room. Mark stiffens more with each step they take and he's not sure if it's from wolfy irritation or something else. He's leaning hard one way, and he doesn't think he's wrong. 

"Just woke up?" the man asks in an Irish accent. He crosses his arms, eyeing Mark again. "Nobody sleeps through their first moon."

Mark is intelligent. He graduated from Berkeley with an engineering degree and got a good job in his field. He's an organized mind. So when he goes to say "Well, I did," he has no fucking idea why what comes out is, "You smell... amazing."

The man's thick eyebrows lift towards his ashen brown hairline and he opens his mouth but then shuts it again, seemingly unable to choose what to say. He looks at Mark like he's a circus attraction—the weird, ugly kind. Mark backs himself into the fridge and wishes it would swallow him up, and then preferably suffocate him as well. 

Felix laughs boisterously. Marzia smiles a little, handing Amy and the man a coffee each. Once she's back within range Felix is reaching for Marzia and pulling her to him easily. "Oh, wow, this is even funnier than I thought it would be." It's a testament to Mark's upbringing that he curbs his urge to throw something sharp at Felix's head in a room full of sharp things. "Jack, this is Mark, Marzia's new alpha trainee. Mark, this is Jack."

Mark nods but makes no move towards him. He can only make a fool of himself so many times before breakfast. "Hi."

Jack nods, sipping at his coffee and staying silent. Amy rolls her eyes. "Okay, well, great. Super socializing. I'm going to eat now." She takes her coffee and grabs a plate off the counter with some utensils, then makes her way into the adjoining dining room.

Marzia and Jack share a long look, and then she's following Amy's example and bringing a plate of food into the dining room, Felix on her heels doing the same. Which leaves Mark alone with Jack.

He loiters, his back against the fridge, looking anywhere but at Jack because if he starts Mark doesn't know if he'll be able to stop. He's having enough trouble ignoring Jack's scent which is all kinds of poison, soaking into Mark's skin like lotion and making him ache from how badly he wants those crisp blue eyes to be looking at him through lazy morning sunshine, legs tangled in sheets with a handful of earth-shaking orgasms behind them and several more in their immediate future. He shakes his head and wipes a hand over his eyes, but that does nothing to get rid of the images his mind conjures.

"Sorry," Mark offers when the silence has stretched past 'normal' and well into 'indirect mutual ignorance'. "For, uh, saying that. I didn't actually mean to, if you can believe it."

Jack scoffs, half-smiling, but it's not remotely affable. "Well, it's not like you know what you're fuckin' doin'."

Mark huffs a little and forces himself to smile. He lifts a shoulder in a lame approximation of a shrug. "Yeah. Day four and counting." 

The other werewolf frowns at that but Mark turns his back and picks up a plate and fork, quickly moving into the dining room and sitting between Amy and Marzia at the eight person table. After a minute Jack joins them, taking the spot on Felix's left, nowhere near Mark.

For the most part conversation is absent and Mark cleans his plate in record time—maybe too fast, if the look Marzia gives him is to be correctly interpreted as 'Got somewhere to be, hotshot?' He pointedly looks down at his uninterestingly vacant plate and resists the random urge to screech the tines of his fork against its surface.

"Well," Mark says the second someone else—Felix—has finished eating, "I should probably g—"

"We're watching movies today," Amy says offhandedly, deliberately cutting him off. Mark's already declining when she adds, "And maybe going out to run later."

He actually whines out loud at that, tensing so hard the fork in his unforgiving grip crumples into a mangle of metal. Chuckles sound around the table, and he mutters out a quick, "Sorry," and drops the now-useless utensil. The need in him to run, even now after the full moon, is consuming. But he still has to ask. "Should I really—I mean, I just shifted for the fir—"

"I won't let anything happen, Mark," Marzia says, and she sounds so calmly certain that it helps soothe his raging nerves at the idea of not being contained by four walls with her the next time he gets furry. What really doesn't help his nerves, though, is feeling Jack's eyes on him across the table, boring into him with equal parts confusion and balefulness. Even less helpful is how good he smells, how much Mark already loves the sound of his steady heartbeat.

When he glances over at her, Amy's expression is so hopeful that Mark breaks instantly. "... Yeah, alright." Her bright smile is the best kind of reward, and he smiles back automatically.

He sits in silence as everyone else finishes eating, gnawing his lips raw. What'll happen if he loses it? Is that grounds for a werewolf to be excluded from being around other wolves? How responsible is he for whatever he might do while he's still trying to get a handle on the whole werewolf thing? Mark doesn't realize he's fidgeting in his lap until Marzia's hand comes to rest on his knee, squeezing once before letting go. He stops fidgeting, mostly.

After everyone finishes breakfast Marzia herds them out of the dining room and right to the living room, where a large flat-screen TV sits mounted on a wall with a sectional couch taking up most of the room. Marzia physically puts Mark in a spot in the middle, and Amy drops in next to him and settles into his side like she's had years of practice. She pulls a blanket off the back of the couch and drapes it across their laps, then takes his arm and slings it behind her so she can properly lean into him. 

"Please, make yourself comfortable," he muses. He smiles a little, though, because she's so... easy with him. He's only wearing underwear—he should really ask for a shirt, at least—and Amy's cuddling up to him with no issues, unperturbed with his nudity, platonic as can be. 

He pauses, rushed footsteps downstairs distracting him, and a few seconds later the door opens and a female voice calls out, "Hey, sorry, my boss kept me late again! The evening staff are a bunch of losers." 

A brunette woman wearing thick winged eyeliner and sweatpants enters the room, discarding a bag off her shoulder onto the floor and instantly coming to Marzia and draping herself tiredly into her alpha's arms. 

Marzia smoothes the woman's hair back from her forehead, smiling indulgently as she whimpers pathetically about her coworkers. Once she's finished waxing poetic about the inadequacy of her colleagues, she lifts her head and rubs her nose into Marzia's neck before standing. She sees Mark, then, and turns a curious look on Felix, Marzia, and then lastly, a sneaky smile at Jack where he sits by himself at the other end of the sectional. "So this is our new alpha, hm? I hear you're an accident."

"Among other things," Mark replies with a little grin. 

She laughs, coming around the couch and plopping down beside Jack, who immediately lifts an arm to press her to his side. In her wake wafts her scent, full of citrus and pineapple, and of course the smell of wolf. "I'm Signe. This one hasn't been giving you trouble, has he?" She pokes a finger into Jack's side, hard enough that he grunts and jerks away, a smile flashing across his face before it fades away again. "You let me know, and I'll kick his ass."

Mark huffs quietly, hoping like hell that no one can hear his heartbeat or smell his emotions. But he's in a room comprised almost entirely of werewolves so when he sees even Amy's face change slightly, he knows they all heard and smelled the falsity of, "No, he's... fine."

Signe doesn't even look at Jack when she tugs his earlobe roughly, ignoring his yelp and saying to Mark, "What did he say? Seriously, I swear we trained him. Wild Irish dogs, so unpredictable."

"What, uh, what movie are we watching?" Mark asks, blatantly ignoring her question and trying not to hunch his shoulders or duck his head at the stares he's getting from all around the room. He can't shake the feeling that he's missing something that everyone else knows.

"The Iron Man movies, I thought," Felix answers, collapsing into the couch beside Mark with Marzia on his other side, so close that their arms brush. "Marzipie's favourites. Sound good?"

Mark feels warmth on either side of him, relaxed to the point of lethargy. He's surrounded by the opulent scents of contentment, wolves and pack. The restless something inside him isn't quite so restless anymore, and he knows that this feeling of acceptance is why. But it's still not really his pack, is it? A pack can't have two alphas, and he's not about to fight Marzia for her right to lead people she's known much longer than four days. So... why are they keeping him here with them? Why isn't Marzia treating him like any other student? They're obviously not this friendly with anyone else they're habilitating. So why him? Because he's an alpha, the biggest threat if left unchecked? Is he their pet project because bitten alphas are so rare? His old friend bitterness finds him again, whispering sweet nothings in his ear. He shoves it down but not before every wolf in the room smells it.

"Sounds great," Mark says. No one calls him on the evidence of his dark thoughts. 

By the end of Iron Man he's ready to bolt, since his mind hadn't conveniently stopped thinking depressing things when he told it to. His heartbeat must be erratic because everyone keeps glancing over at him every now and then, expressions of concern—or in Jack's case, confusion—on their faces. Either that or he's putting out some seriously panicky vibes. Or smells. Even Amy's noticed, and she rests her cheek on his shoulder and looks up at him, asks him with molten brown eyes, _What's wrong?_

Rather than answer her silent question he untangles himself from her and Felix and gets to his feet. "Um, I should be heading home."

"Oh, c'mon, stay," Signe whines. "We haven't even gotten to the second one!" 

Next to her Jack is silent. She shoves her elbow indiscreetly into his ribs. He groans a little, then says flatly, "Yeah, you should stay."

Well, Mark knows who he's not taking on the Vegas trip. Jack's opinion is plain as day, and he couldn't look more convinced that he wants Mark to jump out of a plane without a parachute. If indifference was a smell, Jack would be drowning in it. 

He catches Marzia's eye. Her face pleads with him for something. Maybe to stay, maybe to tell her what's wrong. Probably both, and Mark's not about to explain that her packmate is the reason he's having a minor internal crisis because he's pretty sure he fell in love at first sight, and the guy is looking at him with about as much enthusiasm as an old tomcat regards a playful kitten. He edges closer to the doorway. 

"I've got some stuff to do at home, sorry," Mark says. It's a baldfaced lie, and he knows everyone knows it. He ignores it when Signe, Amy, Felix and Marzia all turn to look at Jack with explicitly unimpressed expressions and hurries from the room.

Marzia follows him, catching up when he pauses at the front door once he remembers that he's basically naked. "You know you can stay. Jack is just... He's not used to another alpha being around. They make him nervous."

"All the better that I go, then, don't you think?" Mark murmurs. "I don't want to make your pack nervous. And he's got good reasons to not... be comfortable around me. I'm not even a week into this stuff. I could snap at any time. And he doesn't know me, I could want to challenge you and take your pack."

"If anyone is afraid of you because you're an alpha, it's you, first and foremost," Marzia says, some heat in her tone. "Unstable alphas don't sleep through what's supposed to be their worst possible night. Unstable alphas don't catch themselves before they threaten other alphas, or attack people. You've got four days under your belt, and I've never seen this amount of self-control in such a new turn, alpha or otherwise." She smiles, resting her hands on his cheeks and holding him there so she can look into his eyes. "You really are an accidental werewolf, but your level of talent is no mistake, Mark. I've got so much faith in you. I think it's time you did, too."

"What do you—" Mark begins, but then Marzia is efficiently stripping to full nudity, and Mark slaps a hand over his eyes. "Marzia, oh my god—"

"Oh, Mark, please," she laughs. "You'll see worse than a naked woman in this life, I assure you that. C'mon, get those off." Her hands tug at the waistband of his borrowed briefs.

"I am very uncomfortable," he gets out, holding one hand firmly over his eyes and the other with a death grip on his underwear. "What are you even doing?"

" _We_ ," she corrects, grabbing his wrist and pulling his hand away from his face, his eyes meeting hers resolutely without wandering down, "are going to shift."

Panic slimes up his throat, clogging his lungs. His gaze flicks towards the living room. "I can't, I'll—"

"Enough," she snaps, letting him go. There's a layer of growl under the word, and something in Mark's brain tells him that the sound appears deeper than it actually is—he just doesn't know _how. It's her alpha voice,_ he realizes, used to force submission in situations where diplomacy fails. He feels a responsive hot burst inside his chest. She's asserting over him.

Mark bristles with instant temper at the display of subjugation, the heat slowly flooding through him. "Marzia, don't—"

"You refuse to listen to me? You want to defy me?" she nearly snarls. "Then do it as a wolf. I don't accept challenges from little boys."

The roar is out of him before he can stop it, and he's fumbling with angry, shaking hands out of the briefs. He feels more than sees or hears the rest of Marzia's pack enter the room at the sound, but Marzia's already shifting, her body undulating with waves that seem to pulse the air around her like atmospheric pressures breaking, over and over. Then Mark, growling low in his chest with a sound deep and menacing enough that he's even scaring himself, is changing too, shoving fire through his veins like water rushing through pipes.

He's on his feet, all four of them, and he's panting hard, jaw open and lips curling along with the rumbling that hasn't stopped. Marzia is across him—a sandy-coloured wolf with hints of grey-white through her fur, and flashing brown eyes that dare him to act.

Mark waits, shoulders tensed and head low, feet spread in a ready stance. Marzia paces across the kitchen floor, back and forth and again, and her eyes don't stray from his. He doesn't even want this. He doesn't want to challenge her. He doesn't want her pack for himself. He just wants to be a part of something that makes him feel like he's not there as a novelty, or an asset. He wants to belong to someone, to be someone that other people can depend on if they need. He wants to be an alpha, and a good one, but he's not going to fight or steal to do it.

His growling has long since stopped, his aggression bleeding away with it. Slowly, so she doesn't pounce, Mark sits back on his haunches. With a long breath through his nose, he swallows whatever is left of his alpha-based indignation and pride, turns his head to the left and lifts his chin to the ceiling.

"Did he just—" comes from the door to the hall, but Marzia barks once, sharply, and they quiet. 

She approaches Mark, stopping before him and sitting. Delicately she presses her nose into the fur at his throat and Mark flinches hard at the touch, jerking away and tucking his chin back down. She noses him again, this time the side of his face. It's a long stroke and she lingers, nuzzling into the thick fur of his ruff. Mark inhales and then sighs out a rough breath but he smells no anger from her, no savage heat and spice, just regular wolf warmth and something that reminds him of chamomile and summer winds.

When she doesn't stop Mark noses a little at her, too, brushing his snout along the side of her jaw. Her pleased rumbling, the not-hum-purr again, is soothing just like the night before. She inches forward and curves around him, resting her chin against the back of his neck. The hum-purr sings through him, calming the spike of anxiety at what was obviously Marzia proving her point by pushing him, that Mark is in control of himself despite whatever may push his wolfy buttons. He curls around Marzia and growl-rumbles in his chest, a lower sound than her hum-purr but by the way she snuggles into him, he thinks it's just as calming for her.

Felix comes to them, kneeling, and meets Mark's eyes. He doesn't touch either of them. "You're not going home." It's not a question but also not an order, more of a statement about an obvious fact.

"You guys are making me want to puppy pile," Amy whines from the doorway. "C'mon, he is enormous, like a furry beanbag! Oh my god, he looks so soft. Signe, can you imagine?"

Signe's response is a yearning sigh. Mark snuffles into Marzia's ruff and has a moment of thankfulness that wolves can't blush.

Marzia yowls in what Mark could only describe as a friendly tone, and that seems to be all the invitation the rest of them need to approach the two wolves. Felix's hand instantly rests on the back of Marzia's neck, stroking through the fur and digging in with scratches. Amy is unashamedly all over Mark, uncaring as she pushes at Marzia's snout and throws herself across Mark's back like a cape. He huffs out a breath of air, not from the weight but out of amusement, and Marzia leans out of his space so Amy can wiggle her arms around Mark's neck.

"Oh my god, you are _so soft_ ," she says happily and then buries her face in his ruff. Signe's hand runs along his snout and under his jaw, scratching as she goes. His rumbling increases and Amy laughs. "You're like one of those motel beds that vibrate."

Now that bonding has replaced confrontation, Mark's all too aware of Jack's smell again. He hasn't touched Mark; he's sitting cross-legged on Marzia's other side, a hand idly running down her back. Mark refuses to glance at him, to show Jack any kind of negativity, so he lets himself be pet by the girls.

Felix rubs one of his dark ears, saying simply, "So, this is the way this will work. While you learn how to be a werewolf, you'll be like a beta. Once everyone agrees that you're ready, you'll be an alpha next to Marzia, and you will both have equal power. Got it?"

Mark feels his ears flatten to his skull and he looks right at Felix, then to Marzia for confirmation. She nods her head, an odd thing to see an animal do, and Mark lets his breath out roughly. They're... making him pack? When no one contradicts it, not even Jack, the reality of it strikes. They really are... They're inviting him into a concept of family—of leading a family—that wasn't even a concern to him five days ago and now is something he needs so badly it was killing him to think he would never have it. They're making him, a random alpha with no association to them, part of their pack by upsetting pack structure and establishing a dual alpha system, which will probably take a long time to work properly without problems, like power struggles whenever they don't see eye to eye. They want him with them, and they'll let him have power that he honestly hasn't earned among them—and so, they're giving him the chance to earn it before he's actually given any of that power.

He makes a sound in the top of his chest, a high groan that's supposed to be happy but almost sounds like he's in pain, and Mark supposes that's probably not far from true. Marzia bumps her nose into his cheek, hum-purr at maximum. He bumps her back.

On his back, Amy says into his fur, "Damn it, Felix was right again." 

Mark looks at Felix, ears perking again as he stares him down intently, a silent demand for an explanation to the statement. Felix grins, leaning a shoulder into Marzia. "Well, I have good taste in people, what can I say?"

Amy groans, lifting her face to accuse, "You got a stupid ping when you met Mark, that has nothing to do with your taste in anything! You dress like a ten-year-old homeless model! Your taste is terrible!"

"I think," Signe says loudly, cutting off the possible beginnings of a shouting match, "that we can just leave it at: Mark, we're so glad you're here."

A snort slips out of Jack and Mark expends a lot of will power by not looking his way. He still flinches a little, though. 

"You can bite him, Mark," Amy grunts. "We wouldn't even blame you."

_That would just be living up to his expectation of me_ , Mark thinks. He shrugs his shoulders, jostling Amy on his back and making her laugh.

"Do you know how to change back?" Signe asks, and Mark shakes his head. "Don't push fire out, pull it in. Withdraw it into you." She waves a hand around as if to exemplify the ease of the task. "Same things but backwards. If it feels really weird, you're doing it right."

Mark nods, wiggling his shoulders until Amy slides off and getting to his feet. _Pulling the fire back. Simple._ He shuts his eyes and visualizes receding fire, his body cooling, fingers and toes first, then palms and feet, ankles, forearms. It takes minutes—he gives up three times and starts over before on the fourth try he finally starts to feel a tingle in his fingertips, until suddenly a fierce shock of frigidity blows through him, an implosion of cold that's there and gone in a heartbeat. He gasps, and in the span of his breath he's completed the shift. His eyes snap open and he's blessedly human again, but very out of breath, very weak, and very naked. That's to be expected, though.

He falls back, unable to stand on his jelly legs, and sits on the kitchen floor breathing hard, holding himself up with shaking arms. When he thinks he can speak, he gets out, " _Holy shit._ "

"That was a ridiculously fast shift back," Felix notes, handing a human Marzia her t-shirt and underwear. Signe bends and picks up the boxer briefs, tossing them to Mark who does nothing but let them hit his chest and drop into his lap. "Like, _stupid_ fast."

"That was how it happened in his sleep, too," Marzia adds. 

"Weird," Amy says with delight. "What does it feel like?" She directs this at Mark.

He spends a few seconds blinking everything into focus before garbling out, "Cold. Like a flash freeze, in my everything. Then ow."

"Weird," Amy says excitedly. "You should get dressed though."

Mark groans and lets his arms collapse so he fall back on the tiles. "In a moment. Just... let me die for five minutes real quick," he croaks.

"I draw the line at naked men dying in my kitchen," Felix muses. He tucks his hands under Mark's arms and pulls him to his feet, then manhandles him into the underwear when he proves himself useless, physically speaking. "There, buddy. How you feel?"

Mark grips the counter beside him with fervour, since it's probably the only thing holding him up. "I'm good." He sounds drunk. He feels like he's got a foot in the grave, times a hundred.

"It looks like the way he changes back has a bit more of a wallop than the average wolf's," Marzia notes with worry. "And it was probably too soon after his first shift to be anything but painful."

"Jack, why don't you try...?" Felix leads off, meeting Jack's frustrated glare. "It might do the trick. Like smelling salts."

"So glad I could help," Jack says dryly. He approaches Mark, wavering where he stands hanging onto the counter, and offers his wrist. When Mark just stares blankly at him, he says, "Scent me. The way that I smell to you will... wake you up, sort of."

Mark looks at him with bleary eyes, blinking. "You don't like me," he says, as firmly as he can manage. He pushes Jack's wrist away. "You don't want to help." Dazed as he is, Mark's surprised he catches the scalding look Signe sends at Jack. "I'm fine. I just need... to sit down." He sighs when a minor wave of dizziness spreads through his head, shutting his eyes briefly.

"I have something that will help," Amy says quickly and then disappears out the front door to the stairwell. Her steps thump up to the third floor and further into the apartment—her apartment, apparently—above them.

"Take him to the living room, Jack," Marzia says, and the tone of voice she uses isn't necessarily kind. 

Jack says nothing, and Mark lets him take his arm and loop it around his shoulders, hefting most of Mark's weight and helping the weak alpha into the living room and down onto the sectional. He ignores Jack's scent, tantalizing, heady. Unattainable.

"Thanks," Mark mumbles, tipping his head to rest on the back of the couch. When Jack lingers awkwardly, he adds, "You can leave. It's okay."

"Are you tellin' me what to do?" Jack asks, evidently irritated.

Mark rolls his head back and forth in a lethargic, wordless 'no'. "Just know you don't want to be here."

"Don't act like you know me," Jack snaps, and leaves the room.

Mark must sleep for a bit after that, because he wakes up to Amy sitting beside him, offering a glass of clear liquid that smells like stale tap water and something that makes the inside of his nose tingle. "Wh's'at?"

"It'll help," she says, helping him sit forward to drink it. As he swallows it chills his throat and empties into his stomach like a block of ice, sloshing around inside him and causing chilly mayhem. "Give it a minute," she says when he makes a face at her.

Mark waits, and slowly the harshness of the cold drops away and his body wakes up with a static, invigorating energy that resonates from his centre and permeates outwards into his extremities. One by one his tense, aching muscles ease. He sighs with relief. "Oh, that's nice."

"I call it moon juice," Amy says, laughing at his scrunched expression. "It's not actually called that. It's a potion for helping with rough shifts, or when wolves get really beat up. It calms the wolf and gives the body strength."

"A potion?" Mark says skeptically. "What are you, a witch or something?"

"Or something," Amy says with a shrug. 

Marzia and Felix enter the room, Signe following and Jack bringing up the rear. All of them have a snack bowl in their hands, or in Jack's case, an armful of glasses and different beverages. They deposit their goodies onto the coffee table and Felix collapses into the couch a few feet from Mark. 

"Amy is a wiccan," he explains, lifting his arm for Marzia to sit and lean into him. "She does wolfy magic mostly, but she can do pretty much anything."

Amy rolls her eyes. "Not anything. I'm very limited. And I only tried other magic one time, and it didn't work."

"Still very talented," Signe pipes up. She sits and tucks her feet beneath her, reaching to grab a handful of barbecue chips. She crunches on one, then says, "One time she called back my wolf when I went nuts." 

Mark lifts his eyebrows. "Now I guess I know why you guys weren't worried about me losing it."

"Oh, we were worried," Amy assures him with a laugh. "You're an alpha—a huge one. You have good senses. You're more powerful than Marzia. We were very worried about your physicality, but not about your control."

He frowns, looking around at them before landing on Marzia. "Then why did you taunt me?" _What were you thinking? I could've taken everything from you. I could've ruined your life._

She shrugs, toying with a lock of her hair where it lays over her shoulder. "I already knew you could be trusted. You just had to figure it out."

"But I could've hurt you," Mark stresses. He deliberately doesn't glance at Jack at the other end of the couch, the first of them who would have acted if he got aggressive, whose gaze Mark feels like knives in his skin, when he says, "I could've hurt any one of you." 

"Did that ever cross your mind when you shifted?" Signe wonders, though she sounds like the answer is already obvious. "Did you ever think of overtaking Marzia, of attacking us? Or did you just shift because she prodded you and made you angry?"

"No, I didn't think any of that," Mark sighs, "but—"

Amy pats his thigh. "Then be quiet. You're perfectly in control. Not to mention, your wolf is so ingrained in you, it's like you've been turned for months." Her eyes look into his, digging through him and seeing something Mark can't even begin to guess at. "But your way of thinking is flawed. Your wolf isn't an addition to you or an urge to be heeled. It's an awakening of the potential that was always in you—a vestigial part of you that the bite unleashes."

"It's really rare to adapt so quickly," Felix says. "And you were bitten four days before a full moon, which you made look like a cakewalk. _And_ you're an alpha. Incredible, man."

"I think your shifts and reversions are so fast because of your amount of power," Amy says pensively, staring at him again. "It sort of makes sense. All of it is bottled up, and it becomes more of an explosion-implosion than a fade-in-fade-out. That sudden rush would explain the crash afterwards too."

"When you shifted in the kitchen it was like, _boom_ ," Signe says enigmatically. "I was surprised you got naked in time."

"Shouldn't all this be enforcing my threat level?" Mark wonders confusedly. He looks around at them, _praising his potential ferocity_. They're all crazy.

"Won't be a problem. I've never seen anyone who was turned with self-control like yours," Jack says quietly, almost like he didn't want to say it. 

Coming from Jack that's high praise, since the guy totally hates him. "Okay, whatever, fine. I'm awesome or something. Can we stop talking about me now?" With a little thrill through his chest Mark sees Jack cover his mouth, perhaps to hide a smile. _Maybe he doesn't hate me that much after all?_

"Iron Man 2 it is," Signe says elatedly, and gets up to put in the DVD.

*

_Wednesday_

Mark shifts restlessly, kicking his sheets off his legs to sprawl across his mattress on his back. Between his own thoughts and the noises in the building and street outside, he's not getting any sleep tonight. He glares up at the ceiling, where he can clearly hear his upstairs neighbours fucking. For the third consecutive hour.

Rolling onto his stomach, Mark shoves his face into the pillow and inhales. It smells like him, his belongings and his body and his life, and nobody else. That shouldn't bother him, but it does. It really does. He knows who he wants it to smell like, too, but that's not going to happen.

He grabs his phone and thinks about texting Marzia, or Amy, or Felix, or even Signe. They could calm his nerves, give him answers to his burning questions about why he's slowly losing his mind. They might be able to tell him why, since he left their apartment on Sunday three days ago (he's been staying home and relaxing, practicing only rudimentary shifts—which is much easier to do with the full moon behind him—per Marzia's instructions) Mark has been lying awake for most of every night plagued by thoughts of Jack.

But if he texted them what would he even say? He's got questions that he needs answered and they would all probably know, but he's not sure if he can handle what the answers will be. Mark runs a hand through his hair, messing it up worse than it already was. He wants to know why everything about Jack is like a drug to him, from his voice to his smell to how great it feels to just be near him. It's insane how much he needs to touch him and how badly he needs Jack to be safe and with him. He really wants to know why the fuck his luck is this bad, because it's very obvious that whatever it is, it is not the same for Jack at all and it's probably going to be that whole "mates" thing that Marzia mentioned, which means that Jack is kind of it for Mark.

With a sigh he taps on Amy's name. _Hey, so, if someone was having constant thoughts about a specific werewolf, what's that mean? I'm asking for a friend._

He dozes for a couple hours once his neighbours finally go to sleep, drifting lazily somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, his mind filling with images of Jack. His features, specifically and collectively, the gravel of his voice when he's angry, the dimple in his cheek when he hides that smile, a smile that Mark needs to see. He thinks he can almost remember his smell as he sniffs the lonely air of his bedroom, knowing that it's not real and not even close to what Jack's smell actually is.

Mark has gotten up, showered, eaten an excessive amount of food and called work out of sheer boredom before Amy texts him back.

_Asking for a friend, huh? Well, I could've told you on Sunday if you just asked, but yes, Jack is your mate._

Mark swallows. It's not like he was expecting his half-assed joke to deflect Amy at all, but he had hoped she would at least ease him into it. He's assuming she knows he put the pieces together—otherwise, her omnipotence is really starting to freak him out. But even knowing her for only a handful of days, Mark gets the impression—and has been shown on multiple occasions—that Amy is not a soft-spoken sort of person. _That's not what I asked._

_Meh. I skipped ahead. I don't have the desire to pander about when you need every second possible to get in Jack's pants._

_I don't think that is even possible. He's been pretty basic with his intentions involving me. There are none._ Mark sighs, leaning forward in his spot on the couch to rest his forehead on the coffee table. It shouldn't hurt as much as it does to type that out. He's finding out a lot about how being a werewolf messes with all of your previous conceptions, like how having a mate is even less fun than being in any painful variety of normal love. 

_Which is why you need to get on the Shag the Irish Wolf train right now, because Signe and I have been waiting for you to text us so we can start laying into Jack. Not to say we haven't been, but now we have permission._

Mark thunks his head hard into the table. It only hurts for a second, and then his alpha healing makes the ache a mere memory. _I know me saying this is useless, but don't do that. If I'm going to eventually be his alpha he needs to trust me in some way._

_Being his alpha doesn't mean you can't be his mate. Jack has some well-founded but mostly incorrect assumptions about alphas, so when he meets one he's... not himself. You being accepted into the pack so soon threw him off too, and Marzia made you shift practically against your will with him right there. She did it to push him as much as she pushed you. You were too focused on Marzia to see but when you shifted Jack wolfed out a bit too, sprouted his ears, claws and fangs, and his control is unshakeable. He was born a wolf. It pissed him off._

_Why does Jack hate alphas?_ Mark thinks the question to himself before he types it out, but right before he hits send he pauses. What had Marzia said about alphas? She had said a lot, but one thing jumps out at him. _They have a depth of assertion on others, especially omegas, that almost seems unfair, to have such an advantage._ And alphas... they usually mate with omegas, don't they? 

He backspaces. _Is Jack an omega?_

_I knew you were more than just a pretty face._

Mark laughs a little at that. So Jack is an omega, and he hates/fears almost any alpha he meets on principle. Mark is a brand new, bitten alpha who just got accepted into Jack's pack with not a lot of warning to anyone, who also happens to be his mate. Being an omega, Jack has probably been expecting all his life to be mated to an alpha, though probably hoping against it, that he could get a nice beta or maybe another omega. And here comes Mark, fumbling through lycanthropy, as powerful as they come. Of course Jack hates him. Mark represents everything Jack has probably been trying to stay away from his whole life, exceptional self-control or not.

_Jack has good reason not to want me. I'm going to respect his decision._

_And that right there is what makes you better than almost every alpha he's met. Signe gave Jack your number, and you're coming over tonight for supper and Monopoly. Be here by six._

Mark slams his head into the unforgiving wood but the welt that develops on his forehead heals in moments, and it offers no insightful or sage advice anyway, so he just goes back to bed.

*

He really should have known everyone was in on it, but he's still shocked when Marzia redirects him and parks him forcibly next to Jack at the dinner table. She gives them both a look that practically screams _just try me_ , and takes her seat at the head of the table. Mark keeps his eyes down on his plate as Amy and Signe sit down and everyone starts eating.

Mark breathes through his mouth to keep his drooling over Jack's scent at a minimum, and doesn't breathe at all when he chews. He focuses on Jack's heartbeat, the least dangerous part of him to focus on, and holds onto the sound in his mind. He still smells him, though, and every time Mark opens his mouth he tastes whispers of him on his tongue. 

His plate is nearly empty when Felix sighs, "We didn't sit you together so you would just ignore each other, you know."

"Yeah? Well I didn't sign up for a matchmakin' service," Jack snaps to Mark's left.

"Please just leave it alone," Mark murmurs, looking first at Marzia and then the others. His heart hurts, clenching painfully with each pump as he tries to defend his mate in his decision to not be his mate. _They can probably hear that,_ Mark thinks, and makes a conscious effort to steady his pulse and quell his nerves.

"Jeez, Mark, calm down," Signe says with concern, eyes flicking between his face and chest. She reaches across the table to rest slender fingers against his wrist.

"Sorry, I'm fine, it's fine," he blurts, pulling away. Signe takes her hand back and glares daggers at Jack instead.

There's silence for another minute, Mark poking at his remaining food. "Um," Jack says beside him after a few moments, and then long fingers are tentatively touching at Mark's left arm for his attention. Mark's head snaps up to meet Jack's eyes, so fucking close, and he waits with a lump sitting in his throat. His smell is overwhelming. "Do—..." Jack hesitates and his face closes up a little, and Mark realizes belatedly that Jack had actually been looking at him without guarding his expression, up until the point where he brought his guard back up. "... Could you pass the salt, please."

Mark nods and hands him the salt shaker as his heart crashes and burns in his chest. Their fingers brush when he passes off the shaker and it hurts so good, sends little sparks through his hand but Mark quickly pulls away. He gets to his feet and brings his plate into the kitchen.

Signe comes to him at the sink, where he stands staring blankly into the basin. "He'll warm up, Mark, I promise."

_Not willingly, he won't,_ Mark thinks. "Okay," he mumbles. Signe gives him a look like she knows he doesn't believe her but she lets it go.

They set up at the table and make teams for Monopoly, and Jack and Mark are unsurprisingly shoved together again. Mark almost says something just because of the cold look on Jack's face, but Marzia is watching with such intensity that he's afraid if he says anything but a proposition that she'll bite his head off. So he stays silent and picks the top hat as his piece, placing it next to Jack's little iron. 

"I refuse to sit through a whole game of Monopoly without conversation," Amy grumbles, rolling the dice first, "so someone better start talking." The nasty look she gives Jack insinuates that he had also better be the instigator.

On his left again, Jack is silent as he takes the dice from Amy after she moves her piece to Baltic Avenue and pays Felix, who's acting as banker. He shifts in his seat, discomfort spewing out of him, and says to Mark at length, "You... seem like you're doin' well. With everythin'." 

His words are stiff, but (Mark hopes) genuine. He shrugs. "Yeah. Good teachers, I guess." Around the table his packmates—packmates, he can _say_ that—smile at him. "It's easier and harder than I thought it would be."

"Like how?" Amy asks.

"I thought I would be... feral, I guess," Mark murmurs. He watches Jack roll and move his piece. "I thought I wouldn't be me anymore. Since I didn't know anything past the basics I had no idea what to expect, but I still had expectations, you know? I thought about how I would adapt being a werewolf into my life, just carrying on as I was before. I had no idea that I would... that I would need so many things on an emotional level as a wolf, as an alpha. I didn't know I would need my wolf, a pack, a m—" He stops abruptly. "But actually... becoming a werewolf has been easy. Way easier than I thought, but a lot harder to adjust to."

Felix nods, giving his mate a bold grin and taking Jack's money to exchange for a property card. "When Marzia turned me after high school graduation, she had warned me about everything, but..." He laughs a little. "I still clawed her up pretty good my first shift, knowing all I knew."

"Marzia turned you?" Mark asks, eyebrows up.

"On our honeymoon," Felix confirms. "We got married right out of high school, barely took off our caps and gowns before we put on a dress and tux. We had a stay-at-home honeymoon and a couple days' worth of wild monkey sex, then she turned me."

"You should've seen them," Amy snickers. Jack hands Mark the dice and he tosses them onto the table. "Felix knew about mates and everything, but after he turned he was on Marzia all the time. Nose in her neck like he'd die if he didn't smell her. After that he had a lot of respect for how much she held herself back while he was human."

"If your mate is human, do you still know they're your mate?" Mark wonders, glancing at Marzia after he moves his hat to the right square, Reading Railroad. He buys it.

She smiles. "Usually. If the mate bond isn't as easy to sense, like between betas or omegas, then it's tougher. But most of the time, yes, you can tell."

"Did someone turn you, too? Or were you born a wolf?" Mark asks Signe, passing the dice off to Marzia on his right. 

"Turned," she replies. "By Marzia, for my twentieth birthday. We had known each other for a long time by then, since sixth grade. I had seen Felix turn, had reassurance from Jack and Marzia that I didn't have to be a wolf to be with them, just like Amy." Signe gives Mark a tender smile. "But it was something I knew I wanted. I felt the wolf in me long before I ever turned. When I did, it was like coming home."

"Marzia never pressured any of us to turn, which is decently rare for an alpha," Amy says. "Not in a bad way, but alphas feel the need to have a large pack—about four or more is the minimum before the urges go away, for the most part—and they'll get the urge to ask human pack members often, if they have any, if they want the bite." She sighs, but she's grinning. "My dad married her mom, a werewolf, when I was five and Marzia was nine. Her mom was a beta so she couldn't give the bite, but it was an open discussion for a long time whether I wanted to take the bite from Marzia once I turned sixteen. I never did, and unless I bring it up, it's not a discussion anymore."

"How would it work, if you turned? Since you're a wiccan."

"I wouldn't be a wiccan anymore if I turned," Amy tells him. "Wolves can't perform magic—at least not their own magic, and I don't know any other successful kinds of magic to try."

"I don't think you should be a wolf," Mark says, frowning pensively. Then, when he looks around and sees the tense faces surrounding him, he adds hastily, "Not—not that I don't want you to be pack. But... you're not a wolf. You're just not."

Amy grins, elbowing Signe next to her. "Told you his werewolf mojo was awesome."

"Werewolf mojo," Mark parrots, laughing.

"It's like," Amy purses her lips in thought, "like wolves all have potential to have a bit extra. Werewolves have heightened senses, but in some cases like Felix something else gets heightened too. Felix has boosted intuition, gets flashes of insight about people he meets or places he goes. Signe feels more, empathizes with wolves around her, feels a bit of what they feel. Yours is like, the propensity to... to _see._ But not the future or anything. I feel like you just see the reality of a thing. You look at something, and you understand it."

"I don't know if that's really true," Mark says hesitantly. "I just... I know you would never want to be a wolf."

Amy rests her chin in her hand as Felix rolls, then pays himself to take Vermont Avenue. Jack glares at him, the card for Oriental Avenue in his hand. "Hmm. How do you know that?" she asks.

"You told me," he says, but Amy is already shaking her head.

"I didn't say I knew I would never want to," she says, grinning. "I said I always had the chance, that right now it wasn't what I wanted."

Mark frowns, and she continues, "You took to Marzia, a fellow alpha, extremely well for a new werewolf because you saw very quickly how trustworthy she is, how much she wanted to help you. You immediately knew Jack wasn't a fan of you, and it only took minor coaxing to know why once you had all the pieces. You've got some oomph of your own."

"I genuinely do not agree with any of that. And Jack is entitled to feeling however he wants to feel," Mark adds quietly. "No matter what I am or what he is."

Amy rolls her eyes. "Yes, honey, we know." She glances between Mark and Jack. "Indulge me for a minute, here. Mark, look at Jack. Right in the eyes."

Mark looks over, but when he sees the salty glare directed at him he looks away again. "I'd rather not." Jack's laugh doesn't hold any humour in it, but he doesn't think it was supposed to.

"Jack," Amy warns him with vigour. "I'm tired of your shit. Mark is the nicest alpha you've met since high school and you're treating him like trash for no goddamn reason. Now do it." Marzia glares at him from her seat, along with Signe and Felix, brooking little to no declination. 

Mark doesn't look his way again but after over a minute of silence Jack touches his forearm where it lies on the table and he glances over reflexively. The Irishman is tense but not overly so, and when he meets Mark's eyes there's something... honest in them, almost an apology. Mark stares, getting lost in eyes so blue that he might as well be swimming in them. The longer he looks, the more open Jack seems to get—the complete opposite of what Mark was expecting—and Jack's hand closes on his forearm with all the ease in the world, fingertips pressing, brushing. Jack's heartbeat picks up as Mark lets his hand do something similar on Jack's wrist, closing his fingers around it in a gentle shackle. Mark feels his elevated pulse thumping beneath the skin there and he wants more than anything to kiss the pulse at his wrist, at his thigh, at his neck. He wants to imprint his lips into the beating flesh under his jaw while Mark rides him, filthy and slow, until they're both drowning in sensation.

Jack's touch is like the sun, warming his skin languorously to the point where he's sure he's radiating his need like heat waves. The smell of Jack surrounds him in a cloak, and for the first time there isn't even a hint of negativity under it. It's the first time that Mark's felt like Jack might actually be his mate. He stops himself when he starts leaning forward, stops his hand from moving up Jack's arm to cradle the side of his neck and pull him in. With care he lets Jack go, but he absorbs his eyes for another long moment before looking away. Something dense and thrumming sits in his chest that wasn't there before, and every time he glances over to Jack's profile, it booms through his blood like a drum.

Nobody talks about it and the moment eclipses. Jack is a steady warmth beside him, casually there but calming—nothing like the antagonized presence he was before. Conversation kicks up again, Signe sharing something that happened at work the night before, and it's easy now. Jack talks more, smiles a few times—he's just as beautiful as Mark thought he'd be when he smiles. His hostility is like dust in the wind, and when Mark's shoulder leans into his as he reaches across Jack for a card Felix hands him, the pungency of his smell amps up like a sudden burst of fireworks. Mark inhales sharply and glances at Jack, and their eyes meet again for a few breathless seconds before Felix accuses him of fraud and demands his payment.

Somewhere around the halfway point the game gets dirty, and sportsmanlike name-calling evolves into cheap shots and nasty insults. Jack and Mark trade and hoard property trilogies, raking in steady money until Signe is screeching at them in Danish, Amy soothing her with a hand on her arm as she laughs uncontrollably. Marzia and Felix get their hands on Park Place and Boardwalk and stack houses and hotels on them, snagging Jack on his way past and bankrupting him in one fell swoop. Mark tries to hang on and manages to last for a few more rounds, but when Amy and Signe get bankrupted by Mark and then Felix respectively, it's just Mark versus the power couple.

"You got this," Jack enthuses on his left, pressed into his side as he hovers near the board, like it will somehow improve their chances if he's invading Mark's personal space. With Jack this close Mark is just trying to breathe and blink at the same time without looking like he's having a stroke.

Mark manages to focus and take out what's left of Felix's assets when he lands on North Carolina Avenue, which has four houses, but in his next run he hits Marzia's fully upgraded Boardwalk and it's all over.

The losers groan pathetically as Felix shoots to his feet and howls in victory. "Oh, yeah, in your face!" 

Signe and Amy send a pair of scathing looks at Mark. "This is your fault," the human accuses. "You had _one job_."

Mark rolls his eyes. "I didn't see you pulling your weight over there. At least I lasted until the end."

Jack ducks as Felix dances by, pointing his fingers in their faces tauntingly. He glares at the passing beta, then grumbles, "Yeah, exactly. Neither of you did a thing. So be quiet."

"And who was it that bankrupted first?" Signe inquires in a sugary tone. Jack's sour look is answer enough, and it sours further when everyone laughs.

Mark nudges his shoulder against Jack's and the werewolf looks up at him. "Think of it as a smart business decision. Technically by losing first you lost the least money out of all of us." Jack huffs out a laugh. "Yeah, see? You're the real winner here."

"Don't push it," Jack says, outright laughing now. Mark stares, drinks in the sound like manna from heaven. Jack catches him and where Mark expects a glower to form, there's only an amused little smile.

On their way to the living room for a movie, Felix puts a hand on his back and stops him when the others go on. "What is it?" Mark asks him curiously.

Felix props himself against the doorjamb. "You know Jack is an omega."

"Yes," Mark says, confused, because it hadn't sounded much like a question.

"Amy said she got you to figure it out, and Signe told Jack. We know it doesn't alter the way you see or treat him one way or another, but him knowing that you know and seeing that you still respect him just as much, and acting like he is now... It's good." Felix eyes him, then shoulders away from the doorjamb and wraps a tight arm around him. "It's better than good."

Mark ducks his head, pushes back when Felix shoves his nose into his hair. "It is, but... I don't know. I'm optimistic, don't get me wrong. But it doesn't mean anything has changed."

Felix pulls back to give him a broad, beaming smile, and guides him onwards to the living room. "That's exactly what it means, buddy." 

When Mark enters the room the first face he sees is Jack's, looking right back. Cerulean eyes arrest him where he stands and Mark swallows, unable to look away.

"Why don't you sit next to me, Mark?" Signe says, patting the seat between herself and a suddenly horrified Jack. "Amy tells me you're a seriously good cuddler."

"Could've gone pro if I didn't bust my knee," Mark says with a smile, enjoying her pretty laugh. After a quick look at Jack's face—embarrassed?—Mark takes the spot next to Signe. His arm rests against Jack's and warm pleasure blooms there, making him want. This was a horrible idea.

Signe snuggles up under his arm, sighing as she buries her nose into his chest. "It's nice having a male alpha," she says happily. "Alpha males and females smell different. Way different. It's nice having both."

"I'll take your word for it," Mark chuckles, running his fingers through her hair.

"She's right," Jack says beside him, quiet, like it's only meant for him to hear. "Your smell is ridiculous. Disorientin', like a drug."

Mark looks over at him, his eyes taking in Jack's face. "I know the feeling."

Felix puts in a movie—Signe's pick, The Back-Up Plan—and plops into the couch on Jack's other side, squishing him into Mark. Jack sends him a hot glare but there's no acrid smell of anger, so Mark isn't worried. Felix grins back, slouching into the cushions. 

Mark is a little ashamed to admit, as the credits roll, that he has no idea what he just watched. The entire hour and a half had been spent trying not to throw off Signe, roll over and climb onto Jack's lap and then spend the next day debauching him until both of them are rendered boneless. Along his bicep he feels Jack's heartbeat thump, distracting and soothing. The collar of his shirt is loose, exposing some of his collarbones and practically asking to be nibbled. Having Jack so close makes something in him growl with pleasure and Mark finds himself holding in said growl more than once.

Marzia gets to her feet first, waving a hand at the rest of them to stay where they are. "I'll switch it. What are we watching now?"

Mark doesn't honestly know if he can even last another five minutes with Jack so close, close enough that he can actually taste him on his tongue. He doubts very much his sanity will last another two hours.

"Jack, maybe you should move before Mark pops a blood vessel," Signe says, her shoulders shaking with laughter. "He may actually be dying."

"His control is just marvellous," Marzia notes. "After Felix turned I didn't think we'd ever leave our bedroom again." 

"My control is fraying, is what it is," Mark grunts, refraining hard from sliding Jack onto his lap and stripping him with needy efficiency. "Someone ice bucket me or something."

Beside him Jack huffs out a laugh, eyeing Mark's body. His gaze is drawn to Mark's throat, full of hunger. "His alpha smell whammy is very hard to resist, Fe, you never warned me."

Felix shrugs. "Never thought to. I figured you'd know more than I would."

"Question," Mark says to the room, and everyone looks at him. "Why did holding eye contact make Jack not hate me?"

"I didn't hate you," Jack mumbles. "Think of it as more of a prejudiced dislike." When Mark gives him a sardonic look he grins, a quick flash of teeth. "Maybe just a bit of hatred, unfounded at that. But the eye contact is a mate thing. You usually can't deny the bond between you, if for instance the bond is shaky or you're not gettin' along, when you look into the other's eyes. My parents—and a lot of wolves—do it after arguments. Kind of like an apology, forgiveness and a declaration all in one."

"A declaration?" Mark says, and lets his eyes meet Jack's. 

Jack stares back for a long time before he murmurs, "Yeah." Slowly he blinks himself out of the trance and leans out of Mark's space, heaving a sigh. "It's just another, more intense way of communicatin' with your mate. You can tell each other a lot, with practice." He waves a hand at Marzia and Felix. "These two can have whole conversations without a word."

Mark nods as Signe snuggles into his chest. He jumps in surprise when her hand skims along his stomach, under his shirt, and then relaxes again. "Amy, you're cruel for not sharing Mark on Sunday," she purrs without even opening her eyes. On her other side Amy smiles and doesn't reply. She leans into Mark's touch when he reaches along the back of the couch behind Signe and cups a hand around her face, rubbing a thumb along her cheekbone. 

"If I'd known I would be this irresistible I would've turned ages ago," Mark muses, feeling Amy's smile against his palm. Signe muffles her giggle into his shirt and Jack snickers, Felix cackling on his other side. He catches Marzia's pleased look as she switches the DVD, watching them all on the couch. Mark gets that look—it's all alpha, pride and contentment rolled into one. He's so happy just being able to touch his pack, his whole pack, that it's almost scary. It's like the kind of boundless happiness you feel right before a big fall, the peak before the plummet. He shakes the thought from his head. 

Amy tugs on his thumb, grabbing his attention. _Touch Jack_ , she mouths at him over Signe's head, then points to Mark's right. He turns and looks to where Jack is pressing heavily into his side, looking down into his lap, despondent at best. 

Jack looks up when Mark nudges him, blue eyes wide. "What?"

In answer Mark lifts his arm to rest across the back of the couch behind Jack's shoulders. He lets the silent invitation stand, and after a moment of consideration Jack leans into his side, tucking himself under Mark's arm and pressing his face right into Mark's neck. Felix scoots closer, sandwiching Jack in, and Marzia sits on the floor at Mark's legs, leaning back onto his shins. She presses play for their movie.

Mark inhales through his nose, which is instantly a mistake because now he has a noseful of Jack's heady scent. Their combined scents all over him is enough to drive him insane. He makes a conscious effort not to clench his hands since he's still sort of petting Amy, and instead grinds his teeth against the volcanic need that's rising in him. Mark notes with a distracted glance that Marzia picked Jack Reacher as the next movie, but that's really all he notices because between Signe petting calming circles on his stomach and Jack snuffling at his neck like he's starving for it, he can't focus on much of anything. 

"Jack," Marzia says mildly, shifting Mark's legs to spread more so she can sit nestled between his knees as she turns to face them. "Mark is about to die, you should probably stop."

Mark concurs. Except he doesn't, at all. Jack's lips are pressed hot and fluttering against his jugular, and the predatory twinge of self-defensiveness that he expects never comes. He's pretty sure if Jack _stops_ he's going to die. His head falls back onto the couch and he groans throatily.

"We may have lost both of them," Felix says with amusement. He slips an arm around the omega's neck and uses some significant force to pull him away. Jack's eyes are distant, his mind miles away as he stares at Mark longingly. 

"What's wrong with him?" Mark asks immediately, foggily. His arm falls from Jack's shoulders and Jack whines loudly.

"An omega thing," Marzia sighs. "And an alpha thing. Mated alphas have a particularly amazing smell to their omegas, and vice versa, but the alpha has power behind their scent. It... compels the omega to get friendly. I don't know exactly how it works since Felix is a beta."

"I did this?" Mark says, hushed.

Signe sits up, putting her hands around one of his. "Not on purpose, we know. It's okay."

Mark frowns at Jack's dazed expression. "This is not okay. This is so fucking far from okay. Look at him!" Jesus, he looks like he's drugged, Mark laments, worriedly studying his face for any changes. He knows better than to touch Jack right now, but it's all he wants to do. Mark wants to give Jack every ounce of comfort that he can manage, do everything for him. He wants to make it better but he doesn't think, as the problem, that he even can.

Amy chuckles, pinching his hand at her face. "Relax, newbie. It'll wear off in a few minutes. Pheromones are powerful, but werewolf biology prevents anything from lasting in the blood unless it's prolonged, constant exposure. First time is always way worse, too."

"What _don't_ you know about werewolves?" Mark asks exasperatedly, pulling his hand back and rubbing his face. "And how am I supposed to know when I'm doing the smell thing?"

"If Jack is nearby, you can bet he'll notice," Felix smirks. He's holding Jack, who seems to be perfectly content staying mute, visibly straining with both arms to keep him still as he struggles to get to Mark. "And probably any other omega. They get whammied the hardest by alpha stuff."

Mark sighs. "He's going to be mad."

"He can be mad all he wants, it's not your fault," Amy says firmly, shoving him hard in the shoulder. "And I'll tell him so every time he tries to make you feel bad about it."

"Should I go?" he wonders. "Like, should I be here when he comes around?"

"Having you go would be worse than anything," Marzia says. She sounds certain. "Just watch the movie. Felix has it covered."

Mark doesn't watch the movie. He keeps his focus on Jack, watches the slow incline of clarity develop in his eyes. The whole time Jack looks back at him with his mouth slightly open and his fingers tensing where he has them clamped on Felix's forearms. But slowly his grip loosens, his expression softens, until minutes later Mark's looking at him and a fully functional Jack is gazing back.

The first thing out of his mouth is the last thing Mark ever expected to hear.

"Shit, that was almost as good as sex."

Mark gapes at him and feels his face warm, tries and fails miserably to form words, any words at all. He sits there and balks as Felix roars with laughter. "Uh," is all he can manage. 

Jack elbows Felix off of him and the beta lets him go easily, grinning madly. "Don't have a coronary, Mark, your pheromones are just super strength," Jack grumbles, settling next to him again like nothing happened. "I know you're a rookie and everythin', so just... don't be offended if I suddenly jump across the room. You don't have a handle on your smell yet, so."

He nods, not trusting his tongue to be faithful to his brain. Mark can feel the spot where Jack's mouth was like a sunburn on his skin, and he touches it with a fingertip. Tamping down on his surge of desire, he keeps his right arm at his side, allowing Amy to put her body across Signe's legs and her head in his lap as Signe leans into Mark's side again. He sighs, letting them manhandle him. He hears Jack snort beside him. 

"Open-ended offer to cuddle, just so you know," Mark feels the need to say out loud. "I am a pro cuddler, after all. And not that it matters, but I've never actually consented to any cuddling, and I feel like I should say it out loud for legal purposes."

Marzia laughs, settling back against his legs comfortably. "Great. Can we watch the movie now?"

Tom Cruise is kicking the shit out of five guys—three, technically—in a dark street outside a bar when Jack twists in his spot and grabs Mark's arm. He lifts it behind him and lays it across the back of the couch, then faces forward and leans back again. Mark waits a beat before slowly letting his arm shift until it's resting on Jack's shoulders, holding his breath.

Jack leaves it there, and by the end of the movie he's as snuggled into Mark's side as Signe is. Mark's right side is significantly warmer than the rest of him and his thoughts have been far from PG, but by Jack's comfort he assumes he hasn't been doing anymore pheromone things. It's just pack bonding... with some mental porn added in.

His trio of cuddlers doesn't even stir when Felix and Marzia get up. Mark blinks at them sleepily. "I have to go home," he murmurs.

"Stay," Felix says warmly. "The guest room has a king-size bed. Make some use of it."

Mark yawns, shifting Jack and Signe tightly to his body. "Can someone get Amy?" When Marzia does, picking her up easily, Mark stands and does his best not to drop either of his cargo. Jack clings like a bush baby, mumbling drowsy things into his shoulder but Signe is out cold, complete deadweight and officially the more difficult one to carry. He manages, though, and follows Marzia to the guest room.

The bed is indeed king-size, and the room smells mildly of all the scents he's quickly becoming attached to. Felix pulls back the covers and Mark drops Signe into the pillows where she immediately snuggles up and goes comatose. Marzia sets Amy down next to her and the human curls towards her packmate. Felix and Marzia then go about divesting the girls of their pants or, in Amy's case, leggings and skirt.

Mark circles to the other side of the bed and tries to set Jack down, but his arms around Mark's neck latch tightly. He sighs, gesturing to Jack and whispering across the bed, "What do I do about this?"

Marzia smiles. "Just try to get his pants off. The rest you can't do much about without risking a black eye." She and Felix drift towards the door. "Night, Mark. See you in the morning." They shut the door behind them.

With Jack on him like a lamprey Mark somehow gets his jeans off without braining himself on the dresser behind him, which is no small feat. More difficult is getting Jack's jeans off. He has to physically pry the werewolf off of him, pin him to the bed, open his belt and zipper one-handed and yank his pants down. It's not a surprise but he's painfully hard by the time he has Jack pantsless, the smell of his skin everywhere. As a temperature precaution Mark pulls his own shirt off while Jack isn't surgically attached to him.

He tugs Jack's boxers up to sit properly on his hips and pushes him to the centre of the bed, following right after and pulling the covers up. Mark barely has time to crawl over him, lay in the middle and get comfortable before his bed bugs are on him. Jack suctions to him, throws a leg across his body and smothers to his left side. Amy's on his other side with her head on his chest and Signe behind her, spooning her. Her arm runs under Amy's neck, her hand pressed between Mark's shoulder and the mattress. He's never been so covered in bodies before while trying to get any kind of rest. Somehow, Mark falls asleep within minutes.

*

_Thursday_

He's hot, stickily so. Something smells heavenly and warm near him, tangled up in a mixture of smells that does nothing but comfort him and keep him on the brink of wakefulness and sleep. He sighs, his chest rising and falling with unfamiliar but not unwanted weight. He cracks an eye open, tilting his head to look down his body.

The covers are pushed down past his hips, Amy's legs severely wrapped up in them. In the night she must have rolled over to face Signe because the two are cuddling, Signe's head tucked under Amy's chin. Down the entire left half of him is Jack, Mark's shoulder acting as his pillow. His breathing kicks up when he feels Jack's thigh between his legs, Jack's arm across his chest, Jack's damp, hot breath on the side of his neck. None of these are really helping Mark, and he's already at half-mast from a combination of morning wood and _Jack's fucking leg_. 

Jack pushes over, sliding further on top of him to the point where he's straddling Mark's thigh. Mark keeps in his pitiful sound by biting his lip until it bleeds, healing over again in seconds. He can't help his hands going to rest at Jack's hips, and he certainly won't be held responsible for the sound he makes when Jack growls, contented and low, and slowly rubs his body into Mark.

"Jack, wake up," Mark says, putting a hand to his face and jostling him a bit. "C'mon, I really don't think you'll consent to what you're doing to my thigh."

Signe snorts beside him, startling him. "Please, Mark," she yawns. "Jack would hit that in a New York minute, just like the rest of us."

"I'm... flattered?" Mark says, then chomps down on his bottom lip when Jack growls again and grinds into him. "Did I alpha pheromone him in my sleep or something?"

"No," Signe says, and beside her Amy rolls onto her back, looking at Mark with amusement. "You just smell like arousal. He's going to respond to that no matter what, just like you would if Jack started smelling like sex."

Mark sighs, cupping a hand at the back of Jack's skull. "He already smells like sex all the time," he says grumpily. "I don't need more reasons to push him against walls and destroy him." He slaps his hand gently into Jack's cheek. 

The werewolf goes still, peeking an eye open sleepily. "The hell was that for," he grumbles.

"You were talking in your sleep," Mark says.

"Mark," Jack sighs, shutting his eye again. "I may be tired and I may be an omega, but I have been a werewolf my entire life and I have an ear to your chest. Don't fuckin' waste my time by lyin' to me, alright?"

Mark laughs, holding Jack to him with an arm across his back. "You were humping me a little. It was either wake you up or join in, and I don't think the girls would have appreciated the latter."

Amy smirks. "Speak for yourself. I'll take any chance possible to see you naked."

Jack nuzzles into Mark's skin, reaching down to take Mark's hand that's on his back and reposition it on his head, a silent request for hair petting. He smiles, smoothing his hand through Jack's hair and taking great pleasure in his happy sound. "I'll probably hump you if we puppy pile," Jack murmurs, unfazed. "One of those things, bein' mates and all."

"No complaints here," Mark says quietly. He brings Jack fully on top of him and the omega goes willingly, humming when Mark continues petting him and puts his other hand at the small of his back.

Mark dozes like that, idly rubbing his fingers into Jack's scalp as he snores lightly, inhaling his drug-like scent with each breath. At one point he feels the bed beside them empty but he doesn't bother to move or say anything.

When he comes to again Jack is still there, awake and tracing shapes on Mark's shoulder. He squints a bit when he glances over towards the window where sunny streams of light beam into the room, and he listens over the sound of Jack's heartbeat, hears the others in the dining room talking over breakfast, which smells like eggs and toast.

Mark glides his hand up Jack's back over his shirt and back down again. "Tell me something about you," he murmurs.

Jack's finger doesn't stop trailing over his skin when he says quietly, "I'm the youngest of five kids, all werewolves and all betas like my parents. Even though I'm an omega they never made me feel inferior, made sure I knew growin' up that I was never inferior. I moved here with my family for my senior year of high school, and all my siblin's stayed behind in Ireland since they were old enough to be out on their own by then. I met Marzia my first day when she came up to me, an omega tryin' to pass for a beta or, even better, a human in a high school full of assholes, and sat right down. Felix, Amy and Signe were with her too. She told me she was an alpha, that she didn't care that I was an omega as long as I was the good person she thought I was, and that she wouldn't let anyone fuck with me. Stuck with her after that, and got myself a pack. A good one."

"Where do your parents live?" Mark asks.

Jack snorts. "Unsurprisin'ly they moved back to Ireland two years after I graduated high school and moved in with Signe. S'alright, though. They stopped bein' my real pack years ago. They're still family, but... It's different."

They're both quiet. Mark's hand becomes soothing, rubbing steady circles in between Jack's shoulder blades. He breaks the silence first. "My mom and brother didn't react like I thought they would when I told them what happened. I thought they'd be all kinds of worried, scared for my safety, anxious to know I was okay. And there was a bit of that, I guess. But after I got the words out, it was just..." He sighs. "Their silences said a lot. I knew it wasn't being a werewolf that shook them, it was that I was an alpha. I knew—thought I knew—what alphas were when I was human, I knew the rumours and what people said and the general knowledge that they were capable of ending or ruining your life the second they lost it. After everything, after the freak out in the hospital and then the turn and those first days of adjusting, I just thought that the hardest part would be telling them I wasn't quite me anymore. It wasn't. Tom laughed it off and made dog jokes, and Mom wanted to make sure I was okay and taking all the necessary steps to integrate into being a werewolf. And that was all fine. But the hardest part was knowing exactly what they thought of me now that I'm this."

Jack's silent, a comforting pressure that he feels with every breath, before he says lengthily, "Since I was little I despised the idea that an alpha would probably be my mate, that someone could be allowed to have such incomparable power over me. It didn't seem fair that I was goin' to be dictated to in a relationship that was supposed to be the best thing to happen to me. And almost every alpha I met cemented the fact that an alpha mate was worse than anythin' else in life." He stops, and Mark thinks he's done but then he adds softly, "I'm glad you're changin' my mind about that."

"Me too," Mark whispers. As he lay there surrounded by the combined scent of him and Jack, it starts to become a possibility, the two of them together. It only takes a millisecond for Mark's mind to run away with the thought and he's flooded with hope as he pictures long moments in bed, talking softly or barely at all, or afternoons caught somewhere in the rain, laughing as they run for cover and shake the water from their hair like dogs, or a romantic date night, candlelit and promising. Waking up like today, engulfed with the most important people in his life is something Mark could really get used to, especially if every morning included Jack.

"Mark," Jack mumbles, a hint of need in his tone as he pushes up off of Mark, enough to look at his face. He looks sleepy, and horny. "You're—the thing, you're doin' the pheromones. Oh my god, fuck—you smell like the _raunchiest_ sex."

"I'm sorr—" The scent of Jack's arousal hits him like an anvil to the face when Jack slides against him in a thirsty little writhe. Mark cuts himself off and growls low, the sound rumbling through his chest. " _Shit_. Jack."

"I know, I know," Jack pants, but he doesn't move any further away. His hands are planted on either side of Mark's head and his hips make aborted, hesitant movements against Mark's lap, his cock already hard and trapped only by the boxers he wears.

Mark's hands go to Jack's hips but they're not the stern, responsible presence he intends. They caress down his sides and pause just shy of sliding back to grab his ass. Between them Mark's achingly hard, Jack's little movements driving him insane with teasing brushes through his underwear. 

"Jack," Mark warns him weakly, while he still can, but even as he says it he's craning his neck up to try and nose at the skin below Jack's chin. _God, he smells like so much sex_ , Mark thinks, and just the thought of being the cause of Jack smelling like sex makes his dick throb.

The omega nods hurriedly in agreement but contradictorily still doesn't move, instead dropping onto his elbows and bringing their faces much closer. Mark's surging up before he thinks about how bad an idea it is, laying a hot hand at the back of Jack's neck and pulling him down to meet Mark's lips.

Jack moans into his mouth, high and desperate and in a single motion Mark flips them, pinning Jack down into the mattress for the second time in twenty-four hours, albeit in very different circumstances. Jack's legs come up to loop around his back and keep him close, keep their hips together, and he cups his hands around Mark's neck firmly. Mark runs a hand up his thigh, under the boxers that don't offer much of a barrier, and Jack gasps and hauls Mark down to kiss him again.

When they part again moments later Mark immediately focuses on Jack's neck, inhaling deeply and drowning in the strong scent there, pressing open-mouthed kisses, nipping with human teeth. Jack's groan tapers off into a whine near the end and he starts rocking his hips into Mark's, giving them both the necessary friction they crave.

Quickly it grows frantic, and then Mark is grinding Jack down into the bed as he bites at his neck, growling softly at first and then escalating in depth. "Oh," Jack gasps when Mark bites down a little harder. The brief pain seems to grant him some cognition. "Mark, shit, _oh_ , we—"

"Please tell me to stop," Mark growls, even though it's the last thing on Earth that he wants.

"With pleasure," comes Felix's amused voice. 

Mark jumps hard, turns and looks over his shoulder, breathing heavily, and sees the entire pack in the doorway. Their smiles range from satisfied to creepy.

"It's not what it looks like?" Mark tries, helplessly grinning when Jack laughs underneath him.

"Looks like you guys were two seconds away from enlightening us about alpha-omega sexual dynamics," Amy says cheerily. "With life-size diagrams and step-by-step visual instructions."

That's exactly what the pack would've gotten. They managed to open the door without the two werewolves inside noticing at all. It wouldn't have been much longer before they got a physical demonstration. "Surprise?" Mark says weakly. Jack laughs harder, holding a closed fist to his mouth.

Marzia smirks. "When you're presentable, come have some food." She leaves, and the others drift after her after giving the pair knowing looks.

Mark drops his head to rest on Jack's shoulder with a grunt. "I don't suppose you want to nail the door shut and then nail each other a little bit, do you?"

Long fingers whisper down the sides of his ribs and Mark shivers. "It wouldn't even stop Amy, never mind the others," Jack informs him, amused.

Mark nods, drawing back and sitting between Jack's legs. He looks down at the picture he makes. T-shirt ridden up his stomach, showing a line of hair that widens and then disappears at the waist of his boxers. Limbs splayed in disregard, ready and waiting for something to attach to, wrap around. His lips kissed red. Hair mussed by sleep and fingers. The skin of his entire neck either irritated by beard burn or hickeys or bite marks. The wet spot on the front of his boxers. Eyes that never leave Mark, sparking with blue fire.

"Can you—I'm sorry, can you please get dressed?" Mark gets out, his voice reedy. He doesn't stop staring at Jack, who just lies there like he's not the most delicious-looking thing that ever existed. When Jack makes no obvious move to get up, Mark whines.

"You know, you started this," Jack accuses playfully. "You really did. I was perfectly alright with meanin’ful bondin' but no, you had to go and alpha brainwash me and now here we are. I'm probably pregnant, too."

Mark bursts out laughing and Jack echoes it. As his laughter dies Mark studies Jack's face. "We need to talk about this," he says, once they're both quiet. "I need to... to know where you are with me, about all this. I don't ever want to put you in a position you're not okay with."

Jack's face softens. He sits up, scooting closer to Mark until their thighs touch. "I don't think there's a single situation you could willin'ly put me in that I wouldn't like," he says gently. 

"Don't say that," Mark grinds out. Jack climbs into his lap and Mark tries to stop him, to push him away but his hands just curl around Jack's waist and hold him close. Jack looks amused, so Mark persists, "No, I'm serious, Jack, I could do anything. I could make you have sex with me, just from these fucking pheromones. Just from a smell! Who knows what else I could make you do if I knew how."

"I think you're confusin' the concept of "nonconsensual" with "accidental"," Jack says, smiling when Mark frowns at him. "Mark. Mates are not a one-way street. Everythin' you've felt for me, I've felt for you. I was just against all of it, until recently."

"That's not the point, I—" Mark begins heatedly, but Jack puts a finger over his lips and the words die on his tongue.

"It is the point," Jack says softly. "I want this. I want you. I think you've got a bit of an issue believin' that, though."

"It's too sudden that you decided differently," Mark sighs. "And up until yesterday when the others forced you to, you wouldn't come near me. Now you're saying in less than one day you've completely changed your mind?"

Jack shrugs. "The pack proved what I refused to see, that you're an alpha and a good person. A person I want to get to know."

"I can't hurt you," Mark whispers, the words dragged out. "I can't ever hurt you. I can't hurt them. I can't." The strongest of all of them, Mark holds a power in his hands that scares him so badly he just wants to run from it. He doesn't want to know what it's like to be the best, the most dangerous, because with his luck he's just asking for a fucking disaster. "And I'm primed for it. I'm the most dangerous thing in your lives."

"Oh, good," Jack says agreeably, nodding. "Yeah, then be sure to let Marzia know what time you're leavin' to go raze orphanages to the ground with your bare hands. She'll want to know when to call the police and turn you in. But before they catch you, you should be able to head to the nearest schoolyard and rip apart some kiddies." He looks at Mark, eyebrows high. 

Mark, meanwhile, would like to know where he lost the thread of this conversation, because Jack is abruptly insane. "I have no idea how I'm supposed to respond to that."

Jack rolls his eyes, shoving a hand into Mark's chest hard enough to move him. "You're actin' like all you're doin' is tryin' to find ways to commit violence, actin' like you're after all of us, some huge threat to our lives." He scoffs. "I swear, you are the poster child for the term "oblivious martyr". I may not have always been on Team Mark but the others? They loved you the moment they met you. Signe likes you, and usually she at least pretends to hate alphas so I don't feel like the biggest asshole ever. Amy has had to learn to stand her ground against werewolves and it is not easy when everythin' in you wants to shrivel up at a threat like that. She's pretty guarded but she touches you like she touches Signe. More than her, lately. Oh, and it is pretty much impossible to impress Marzia, and she was like a glowin' parent the day after your first moon. I've never seen her so proud. It's been just us five for years with no one comin' close to breakin' through our pack walls, and you did it in a week. So if your first excuse is that they, for one moment, think you're a threat to them? If they did, they wouldn't trust you like they do."

"But you shouldn't trust me," Mark urges. "I don't know what'll happen if something catches me off-guard and I snap. Marzia pushed me to it with five sentences and a snarl."

Folding his arms across his chest Jack narrows his eyes at Mark. "You bit me, when we were just foolin' around. Right?"

Mark immediately looks to Jack's neck, still littered with abuse from Mark's mouth. The redness is gone and the hickeys and bite marks have faded a bit, but his healing hasn't quite gotten rid of the evidence yet. "Yes."

"And wow, you managed not to maul me, or even shift your teeth, which isn't hard to slip up on even when you're not an alpha-omega mated pair. If my smell is anythin' close to what yours is for me, then you also get a little primal when we're together. Base feelin's. Lust. Hunger. I've lost control once before because of you, the mornin' after the last moon, and I do not lose control." Jack's expression becomes intense. "Are you worried that I'll hurt one of us?"

"You aren't a week-old alpha," Mark groans, resisting the urge to shake him. "The consequences if I lose control are enormous. It's not fair for me t—"

Jack slaps a hand firmly over his mouth, glowering. "We are all dangerous. Just because you're the strongest doesn't mean one of us can't harm you, too." Jack crawls off his lap and takes his hand back, sliding to the edge of the bed and standing. "You don't want any power at all, because you're afraid of misusin' it and causin' damage. Superhero logic, Mark." Jack gives him a little smile. "It means you deserve to have it." He picks up his jeans off the floor and leaves the room.

Mark stares at the door, listening absently as Jack walks into the kitchen and starts conversation with the rest of the pack. His pack—a pack that wants him, big scary alpha and all. He gets to have nice things, right? He's allowed to want things for himself, to achieve things and be given things in equal measure. He doesn't have to refuse being given something just because it wasn't earned or he doesn't think he can live up to it. Things like trust and respect and love, all of which he craves from these people, but he knows he could so easily let everyone down. So easily he could snap and maul one of them and do serious damage. He could hurt Amy who can't even heal like the wolves can, and he would have to live with it. The added bonus is, if he ever snapped and bit someone, and that someone was human—

Well. A tad ironic, to say the least.

He rolls his forehead against closed fists, sighing hard. Marzia is an amazing alpha, and she doesn't seem to have a single problem with Mark. That says something, right? He has her approval, and that means a hell of a lot. And Jack said she was proud of him on the full moon, actually proud of him. He's got to be doing something right.

Mark gets out of bed, pulling on his jeans and throwing his t-shirt on over his head, and spends a few minutes breathing. The room smells like him and Jack, mostly, but there's hints of Signe and Amy under it all and an overall whiff of mingled Marzia-and-Felix, their lingering scent since they live here. He's not upset but the smell still helps tame a few scattered, wriggling thoughts from causing any more self-doubt.

When Mark walks into the kitchen he's assaulted at once. Signe jumps on him and he staggers back into the counter, whereupon Amy glues to his side and glares, brown eyes furious.

"In case it was unclear," she says loudly, staring him down, "you're not leaving. It wasn't said or even implied that you were being given a chance to leave, but knowing you, Mark, you took it the worst way. So I reiterate: _ne pars pas_. No leave. You're the single most cuddleable werewolf I've ever met. _Like you're going anywhere_."

Signe, who has koala'd herself on Mark's back, huffs irritably. "And after I gave you tummy rubs? Ingrate." Then she negates her huffiness by scenting his neck thoroughly.

"I wasn't going to leave," Mark says. He hadn't thought that would need clarifying, but here he is, assaulted by a werewolf and a wiccan on the grounds of his permanence with them. He scoops Amy up and tosses her over his shoulder not occupied by Signe, walking to the toaster and putting in two slices of bread from the bag on the counter. "I'm listening, though, keep praising me." Amy and Signe both smack him, but he's grinning anyway.

Marzia comes to the counter, leaning her hip against it and eyeing him. "We heard everything, obviously, and Amy was filled in." Her eyes soften as she studies his face. "The most dangerous thing about you is your lack of faith in yourself. If you could just see yourself like we see you, you'd be a lot better for it." She smiles a little crookedly. "I'm surprised by you yet again, though. You've always had an anchor, right from the beginning."

Mark perks curiously. "No kidding. Is that why my control is so good so early?"

"Probably some of it," Marzia agrees. "But it's more than just your anchor. You're a strong-willed person, and you're kind to a fault. You want people to be happy—and Amy wasn't wrong when she said you get things easily. You look at someone, listen to them talk, watch them. A lot of it is observation, but you care. You care about every individual. You understand people because you want to know how to help them, what you can do to make their lives easier." She shrugs at his gobsmacked expression. "You're not the only observant one."

Mark looks around and inevitably his eyes fixate on Jack, leaning against the kitchen island eating an apple. He grins around his mouthful and winks when Mark looks his way. God, he wants everything about him. "Alright. So, my anchor. What is it?"

"Fear," Amy says from his shoulder, wiggling until he lets her down. Signe climbs off him too, but they both stay and lean into him. Mark kisses them both on the forehead and gives Amy a confused eyebrow quirk. "Not like, fear of everything that you're psychologically afraid of. Just the fear of becoming that worst version of you, the heartless monster. You are completely terrified about disappointing everyone you know, disappointing yourself by getting closer or achieving that horrible side of you."

What had grounded him every time he was close to losing himself? What was always his internal argument? _Look at what you're doing. This isn't right. You could hurt someone._ It was his mantra. And it always worked, because Mark knows he wouldn't be able to handle it if he permanently changed anyone's life against their will, much like his own was, in one moment of anger or confusion. 

"Nice," he says simply, which is easier to say than, "You guys know me better than I know myself and I am pretty fucking terrified about that, too." His toast pops and he nudges the girls away to turn back to the toaster and butter it. Equipped with his breakfast Mark leans back against the counter, takes a bite and sighs with his mouth closed as he chews. "My anchor is moral reasoning. I bet that's new."

"New to me," Marzia chuckles. She edges into Mark's space holding a fresh mug of tea, pressing her shoulder into his chest. Wordlessly he curls an arm around her back, pulls her snugly to him and takes another bite of toast. "So." She looks between him and Jack, smirking into her cup. "You two had a nice morning, by the sounds of things."

"He pheromoned me again, right as I was wakin' up," Jack says defensively. "And we were already snugglin'."

"It honestly was my fault," Mark says sheepishly. "I got carried away." He stuffs his face to avoid the pack's curious and probing looks, especially from the alpha who steps back out of his arms to do so. "Don't even try it, my filthy thoughts are my own."

"Not even for me?" Jack muses, slathering his eyes all over Mark's body, appreciation plain on his face.

Mark swallows and glares heartily at his mate. "Listen, I'm not going to be swayed by your stupidly pretty eyes."

"He called his eyes pretty," Signe sighs to Amy. "I want someone to say something about me is stupidly great."

"Hear that?" Mark asks his mate. He watches Jack's hips intently when he slinks across the space between them, stops in front of him. He stares at Jack's mouth. "I could go on with the flattery, but we wouldn't want you swooning."

"No, I'd prefer to spend my time more wisely," Jack murmurs. He crowds Mark back into the counter, then leans in. "'Climb you like a tree' comes to mind."

"Stop seducing me," Mark retorts, "because it's working and we are surrounded by werewolves with super noses." Against his will his hands rest on Jack's ribs, digging in and tugging him close.

"I'm actin' like a horny teenager because of you," Jack accuses, smirking. "It's extremely irritatin', and I need to get even somehow."

"This hardly counts, since you're enabling your craving to act like a horny teenager," Mark murmurs. His hand slips under Jack's shirt, pressing against the bare skin of his lower back. Jack leans into him heavily. "Defeats the purpose of the whole thing, really."

"You say that like I'm not enjoyin' myself," the omega says dryly. He slides his palms up Mark's chest slowly. "Why'd you bother puttin' on a shirt? Between me and Amy, you won't be keepin' it on."

"Shirtless cuddles are better, I stand by my beliefs," Amy inputs a few feet away.

"If I was shirtless then you'd be in a lot of fucking trouble," Mark growls at him. 

Jack shivers, giving Mark a glassy stare as he pulls back. "You whammied me again," he complains, blinking, and then faceplants into Mark's throat.

"That's what you get," Mark says, aiming for stern and missing by half a mile. He rumbles happily when Jack leans all his weight into him.

"Well," Marzia says cheerily. "Go ahead and eat, guys. It's past nine already. Any more morning flirting and you'll be late."

"Late f'r what?" Jack mumbles. He doesn't even bother to lift his face out of Mark's neck. Mark shivers from the tickle of his lips, hands clenching into Jack's sides.

"There's a lesson today, as Mark is most likely aware, and you're joining us, Jack," Marzia says pleasantly. 

"I what now," Jack says grouchily, raising his head to glower at Marzia. He turns in Mark's hold, back to his front. "Remind me again when I volunteered to babysit new wolves."

"When you tried defiling the spare room," Marzia replies, amused. "No excuses. Come help, I need someone to shift while I talk."

Jack sighs. "I suppose it was too much to ask that I could have the day to myself?"

"Spending the day with Mark isn't exactly what I'd call a day to yourself," Felix smirks.

"Two birds, one stone?" Mark murmurs into his ear, before he can reply to Felix. "Spend time with me, help Marzia. I'd really like to see you as a wolf."

"Oh, that's playin' dirty," Jack growls. He turns to look at Mark over his shoulder. "You pheromone me and then flirt with me like that? Unfair. I call shenanigans."

"Still true," Mark tells him, then forcibly takes Jack by the hips and moves him away. "Quit being so delicious and eat something. Alpha's orders."

Mark's worried as he says the words (Is he being too pushy, even as a joke? Will Jack take it the right way? What if it makes him mad?) but Jack just grins, running his hands up Mark's arms. "You're not my alpha," he chuckles. Then adds as an afterthought, "Yet." His lips curve at Mark's delighted expression.

"Enough flirting," Felix says exasperatedly. "Both of you, stop touching, eat something, go downstairs." He goes to the coffee machine, gets down two mugs from the cupboard above it and fills them with coffee, doctoring one with cream and sugar before handing it to Jack and the black coffee to Mark. "Jesus."

Mark smirks into his coffee and eats his second piece of toast, watching Jack while he putters around toasting some freezer waffles. Amy, who is already dressed, fed and ready to go, disappears downstairs to get started on her secretarial/reception duties and Signe goes into the living room and turns the TV on to watch the news. 

Marzia and Felix vanish, supposedly to their bedroom if the sounds of drawers opening and clothes hangers are to be believed. Felix comes back a few minutes later dressed and proper, goes to Mark and gives him a quick hug and a cheek nuzzle, then does something similar with Jack on his way to the front door. "See you guys later," he calls, then shuts the door behind him.

Jack watches Mark across the kitchen as he eats the waffles without syrup, right out of the toaster, and Mark does the same to him. He can smell himself in Jack's scent and it makes him want to shift, to howl with happiness and run with wild abandon. He also smells it when Jack's attitude becomes less observant and more appraising, gaining intent with each pass of his eyes. His heartbeat picks up noticeably—Mark is so in tune with the sound that he can hear its palpitations without even focusing. Steadily Jack's scent tints with spicy arousal the more he looks at Mark, and he feels his own arousal increasing the more he lets Jack look. He's sparking daydreams with those sultry blue eyes, demanding his mate's attention. It's intimate, for having ten feet between them and no words being spoken.

When they've both finished their food and coffees there's nothing left for them to do to avoid touching each other, and Mark's barely had the conscious thought of crossing the room before Jack is already in front of him. His arms come up around Mark's neck, drawing him immediately into a kiss and Mark obliges, smoothing his palms down Jack's sides before coming down to grab his ass through his jeans.

The kiss turns filthy, Jack sucking on his tongue, trying to coax Mark to get rough with him. In a devastating move he rolls his body fiendishly against Mark, lifting a leg to wrap around Mark's thigh and give him leverage to grind into him. Mark sighs hard into his mouth and his fingers clench into Jack's ass, making him moan and jerk forward into Mark.

"C'mon," Jack whines, pulling at him. 

"Did I whammy you again?" Mark pants, and presses his hand to Jack's tailbone so he can grind up into his hips. 

"No." Jack chews on his lip and hums in pleasure. "You just keep standin' places and breathin' and you're makin' me really want to get your clothes off in a timely fashion. C'mon," he says again, more of a whisper this time, and tips his head back. "Bite me." 

"Jack," Mark whimpers, and is surprised at his self-control when he manages not to comply. "You cannot just say shit like that to me. We—God, you're fucking gorgeous—Shouldn't we be going a little slower than this? What is this?"

"Mates," Jack purrs. He rubs his whole body against Mark's front, growling happily at the friction. "It can be anythin' we want. At the moment I'd say datin'?" He buries his face in Mark's throat. "Oh my god, I could fuckin' _live_ here."

"It's not just—just pheromones and lust, right?" Mark asks, because apparently he is hellbent on ruining the mood.

Jack pulls back, halfway between amused and frustrated. "Have you heard a single thing I've said to you?"

"When you're doing stuff like this? Not at all," Mark replies. He finally gives in, pressing his face to Jack's neck and dragging his teeth along his jugular.

"Oh," Jack sighs unevenly, almost a moan. "It's—ohh—all mutual, Mark. Just because I was pissed off before I let you in doesn't— _mmmm_ —mean I wasn't already interested. Ah, you need to do that again," he commands when Mark finishes sucking a monster hickey under his jaw.

Mark is all too eager to obey, and he turns to press Jack's back into the counter so he can rock against him properly. Jack moans softly as Mark's hips start a slow pace, teeth making red crescents in a path up his throat, lips spotting his neck like a leopard's pelt.

"Your pheromones are insane right now," Jack gasps, writhing into him when Mark licks over the bite mark he just made. "I am dyin' for you to fuck me. Jesus, get—bedroom, go."

The only response Mark manages is a groan, especially since he can smell that Marzia is now in the room again. Jack seems to not smell her yet because he whines when Mark goes still and clings onto his shoulders, moaning right in his ear.

With great effort he takes Jack's leg from around his body and sets him down, quickly stepping back. Marzia, dressed and looking supremely amused when Jack notices her and scowls, says mildly, "You're getting better at picking up scents, Mark. Well done."

"You are my absolute least favourite person right now," Jack sighs. He runs a hand through his hair and gives Marzia some serious stink-eye.

"Yippee," she says dryly, making her way to the door. "Come on. It's almost ten."

When Mark looks over at Jack again all he sees are the blemishes on his neck, from jaw to collarbone. Hickeys, huge ones that will take a little longer to heal than the others. Idly Mark wonders how hard he would have to bite before Jack got a lasting mark, pictures the sounds he could draw out of Jack. Since he's an omega to Mark's alpha, everything Mark does to him will last longer, but still not very long since werewolf healing is a thing no matter what. He meets Jack's eyes and sees the need that hovers there, ready to act on at a moment's notice. He makes himself turn back and follow Marzia downstairs.

Mark is hovering near Amy's desk, ignoring her knowing looks and trying not to appear to be dying without Jack touching him when the other wolves start showing up. And it shouldn't be funny, it shouldn't be remotely funny, but every single one of them that walks through the door takes note of the smells in the room, the stances of Mark, Marzia, and Jack standing so close together, so comfortably that their bond as packmates is undeniable, and the wolves' expressions are _priceless_. 

Shock at his involvement with Marzia's pack comes up to cover the basic fear that they feel coming near an alpha such as Mark, new and assumedly unstable. Then the shock is replaced further by indignation and disbelief, each one of them visibly scandalized at the idea that they somehow didn't make the cut over him to be a part of her pack. Sprinkled on top is their confusion at Jack's presence, clearly Marzia's pack as well. And the little cherry to christen the whole ordeal? The two shithead young guys that hit on Amy and tried intimidating Mark—well, they look absolutely livid.

He knows it's in bad taste but Mark can't help preening a little under their stares, heavy with jealousy. The longer the wolves in the room look at him the more they must sense the obvious changes in him from last week, because that fear starts to come back on their faces in earnest. 

Before it can reach any kind of boiling point, Marzia smiles at the room and says, "Hello again, everyone. If we're all ready, let's begin." She opens the leftmost door as she did the week prior, holding it open for the wolves to file in. Mark waits until they've all gone in before he follows Jack in, and Marzia shuts the door behind them.

The centre of the conference room has been voided of its chairs, all pushed back against the walls and out of the way. Marzia moves to the middle of the room and says to the somewhat defensively scattered werewolves at large, "Today we'll be starting with some shifting exercises, but not rudimentary ones. Now that everyone's had their first moon, shifting will be much easier. Before we begin, I'll have my First, Jack, demonstrate a seamless transformation while I explain." Jack, lingering near Marzia, nods his head in acknowledgement.

_First?_ Mark thinks to himself, confused. _How can Jack be Marzia's First? He's an omega. She said that betas could be promoted to more powerful positions in a pack, didn't she?_

A few of the others have the same concerns, because one of the two young guys says drolly, "I didn't know the pack bitch could be upgraded." He eyes the marks on Jack's neck blatantly.

Now Mark's not proud of what he does after that, which is snap his suddenly-fanged teeth and snarl so loudly that even Marzia gives him a curious look, but it makes him want to rip the guy's face off a little less. He feels slightly gratified when the man cowers under his gaze.

"If you're feelin' particularly brave, then you're welcome to come and try your luck against the pack bitch," Jack says mildly. His grin is nowhere near mild, and when Mark meets his eyes the grin gets a bit wider.

Unsurprisingly the guy smirks, obviously a beta and clearly confident that he will have no problem fucking Jack's day right up, since he's just an omega. The other man beside him looks equally confident.

Marzia sighs loudly, eyeing the two men with disdain and begrudging acceptance. "I honestly thought you'd challenge Mark first, but this works, too. Everyone else back up, give them space. I am only permitting this once," she says sternly, "to prove a very emphatic point. And after that I don't want anymore egging on of my pack, or else I will throw your useless furry asses out on the street and let Mark at you. Are we clear? Dean?" The first guy, the one that taunted Jack, nods. "Eric?" Another small nod from the guy beside him.

Mark grins meanly, shifting his fangs out again when everyone looks over to him and he has great satisfaction in watching the two men's faces pale. His own threat seems to do the trick, at least.

The others back up except for Jack and Dean, his friend moving away. Jack smirks at the second wolf and he stops with a scowl. To Dean he says, "Oh, your side ho doesn't seem to want to join you. For a second there I thought I might have an actual fight on my hands."

Mark looks at Jack sharply but he's not looking in his direction. _Does he think he can take two betas at the same time? Is he nuts?_ He looks quickly to Marzia, who gives a minute shake of her head and gestures him over. He moves to stand at her shoulder.

The second guy, Eric, snarls nastily, fangs dropping. Mark smells the burst of acrid rage as it wafts to him, feels the sensation trigger a responsive curl of fury in his gut but he pushes it away. "I could kill you in my sleep," he snaps at Jack.

Jack shrugs, unfazed. His posture is relaxed, hands in his pockets as he stares down the two tense betas. "Show me, then."

The wolves share a look, grinning broadly, and move to flank Jack on either side. He stands and watches them both until they slide out of view behind him, after which they sprout claws, fangs and pointed ears. When Jack glances up and sees Mark, he winks.

Eric lunges first with a short growl, aiming low for Jack's waist and Jack hops out of the way last-second, quick as can be—so fast that Mark's not sure he actually saw him _move_. Eric lands on the floor right beside Jack, claws scraping the hardwood, and he whirls around to snarl at Jack but Dean is already there, charging the omega. In a split moment Jack sidesteps his body, spinning and slamming his fisted hand down onto Dean's spine as he whizzes past and making the beta howl in pain. He lands gracelessly on the floor in a sprawl, but he's already moving to get up as Jack breezes past an irate Eric.

Jack is evasive. Every time either beta makes a grab for him, takes a swipe, or generally tries catching him in any way, he's bounding out of the way in the crucial milliseconds where corrections can't be made in time. Occasionally he adds in an attack, a fast jab or kick that has more precision than power behind it. He's elegant as he moves, with a fluid speed that rivals any aquatic predator or bird of prey.

But then they corner him, Dean snagging a handful of his t-shirt in a tight fist as Eric comes up on his front. Both betas swing, Dean high and Eric low. Jack uses the outside of his forearm to deflect Dean's hand away from his face, hitting hard into his wrist, and at the same moment he's bending forwards at the waist, spiralling his body in a single smooth curve and stepping to the side, slipping easily out of his shirt still held in Dean's grip and evading Eric's downward blow. If Mark blinked he would have missed the entire thing. The betas crash into each other and fall in a snarling heap.

"Are we done yet?" Jack asks them, smirking. He's not even breathing hard, and he hasn't shifted at all. Mark stares at his bare chest and Jack catches him and flexes his muscles, giving Mark a filthy look. He can't tear his eyes away.

The wolves untangle themselves and stand. "Fuck this," Eric snarls, pulling his shirt off over his head and toeing out of his shoes. Dean follows his lead immediately, undressing in haste.

Jack sighs, though, glancing over to Marzia. "Can I bite them, at least?"

"Well, if you must," Marzia says, half-smiling. 

With Marzia's permission Jack gets undressed, tossing his clothes to Mark, who barely catches them and stares avidly at Jack's naked body. He's slim and toned from head to toe, all of it pale-skinned and irresistibly mouthwatering. Before Mark can really appreciate him, though, he watches a shiver travel over Jack's skin and then he's changing smoothly, fur spreading over him in a perfect wave and bones shifting harmoniously, reshaping in perfect cadence. He slides into his wolf like one would slide into a hot bath. 

It only takes moments, and then Mark is drooling at a whole other version of Jack. His fur is ashy brown, just like his hair, and streaked with silvery grey. He's bigger than Marzia by a little but with slimmer, slightly elongated features. He turns and looks at Mark, ice blue eyes smiling at him. 

Mark tries to convey how enamoured he is in that moment by facial expression alone, but by the way Jack's eyelids flutter and he takes a halted step towards Mark, he thinks he conveyed it on a more pheromone-y level. Sure enough, the two other omegas in the room—the teenage boy that is terrified of Mark, and a tall black-haired woman—stiffen visibly and stare at Mark like he's a Christmas dinner. He hears Marzia chuckling beside him, watches Jack huff out a few cough-laughs and Mark can't help his own smile.

Eric and Dean have finished their much more laboured transformations and now they're snarling heavily at Jack as he turns his attention back to them. Jack rolls his shoulders once, and then he's leaping away as the two larger wolves converge on him.

Jack runs circles around them, literally and figuratively. He's got turn-on-a-dime accuracy to go along with his advanced speed, and he uses both to elude the betas until they're constantly growling with frustration and temper, eyes flashing dangerously every time they meet Jack's piercing gaze.

When the betas—indistinguishable by name in these forms since Mark didn't watch them shift—start to anticipate his moves, Jack switches tactic in a heartbeat and then he's vicious, pouncing on the nearest wolf and knocking him to the floor with his momentum. He carries through with his speed instead of stopping, though, merely vaulting off of the beta's ribs like a bounce board. Mark hears a distinct crack and winces a little at the beta's cries of pain. The second beta is after Jack at once, snapping at his heels with saliva flying from his jaws. Jack circles a few times, then straightens out and turns at a sharp angle, almost doubling back on himself. On his way past the beta he kicks out hard with his back legs, catching the wolf in the side of the face and sending him crashing to the ground.

With both betas trying to get up Jack takes a moment to stretch, putting his butt in the air and extending his forelegs out in front of him. And that—that gives Mark way too many ideas, and makes him way too happy on too many disturbing levels. He's never going to be able to look at himself in a mirror ever again, because even though he _knows_ it's Jack and he _knows_ that's the only reason he's attracted to him while he's like this, it still makes him feel... weird. Very weird, to look at a wolf and think, _I'd hit that._

_What the hell is my life anymore?_ Mark despairs to himself.

Jack does the werewolf equivalent of bouncing on his toes as the betas pick themselves up. As soon as their feet are planted Jack is on them, snarling and snapping his teeth at them, chasing them away from him ferociously every time one of them so much as considers attacking him. Despite the betas' growling being deeper and louder Jack's is worse, nastier and ravenous and fucking _scary_. His eyes lose their humanity as he bites down on one of the wolves' back legs, teeth ripping through flesh and fur, filling the room with the metallic, tangy scent of blood. He growls and jumps onto his adversary's back as he stumbles and falls, biting hard at the beta's scruff and snarling loudly until, below him, the beta's growling stops altogether. Jack lets go and darts away, whipping his head around just in time to dodge the other beta's lunge, instead anticipating his landing and crashing into the wolf's side as his feet touch down. He unbalances and collapses onto his side and Jack is there again, animalistic noises rolling off his tongue as he stands over him and pushes a paw on the wolf's belly, digging his claws in hard and ripping the skin. As the wolf snarls and tries to scrabble away Jack snarls back, gnashing his jaws in the beta's face and then bending quickly to clamp down on his throat, tight enough that the beta whines pitifully until Jack releases him.

And when Jack's head lifts he's just Jack again. His maw is splattered with a bit of blood, teeth stained pink with it, but there's no rage or loss of control in his eyes. He had let go and let the wolf take over, but only as much as he wanted to—nothing more, nothing less. He prances over to Mark, pleased with himself as the betas groan and whine on the floor behind him. 

Mark kneels down and Jack sits in front of him, licking his lips to clean the blood. "You're pretty badass, you know that?"

Jack shrugs and then grins, jaws hanging open and tongue lolling out of his mouth.

"You did great, but I don't think I have to tell you that," Mark muses. Jack yips once. "You're also really amazing." Jack yips again, much quieter. "And I want to run with you, as soon as possible." A louder yip. Mark smiles and digs his hands into Jack's ruff, sighing happily when Jack leans into him. "Want me to clean you up?" Jack hums in his throat, pressing closer. "You know, you're supposed to be looking fierce, not cuddly. You just put two betas in their place at the same time."

Jack preens at that, his posture straightening. Mark pulls off his own shirt and uses it to wipe at Jack's snout, getting the blood out of his fur. He didn't really like this shirt anyway.

Marzia walks into the centre of the room again, picking up Jack's shirt on her way and tossing it at Mark. The betas' clothes she kicks towards where they lay on the floor, already shifting back. When they're both panting and human, she says briskly, "Get dressed. Idiots."

Mark gets to his feet, tossing his soiled shirt back into the corner and coming to Marzia's side. Jack trots to his side, not Marzia's, and Mark studies him curiously. Jack noses at his hand and stays where he is.

"Now," Marzia says cheerfully, "I hope everyone paid attention when Jack shifted. He can do it again, but if it's not necessary then all the better." She pauses and when no one speaks up, including the two betas now getting slowly to their feet and redressing, she continues, "Typically we would suggest irritating one of you to induce a shift, but, well." She smirks. "The demonstration, and differences, between what a seasoned, born wolf and a recently-turned newbie can do are pretty obvious by now, I would think."

Jack snuffs happily at this, and Marzia smiles at him. "It might be surprising, but it's not impossible for an omega to be promoted—as Jack has shown us, any wolf is capable of anything. It usually doesn't happen, mostly because omegas either aren't as skilled or dedicated to pack matters, or are considered inferior by their pack and are never given the chance to really grow into what they could achieve. But it is possible."

Beside him Jack leans into his leg, nosing at his fingers, and Mark caves and scratches behind his ears. The hum Jack lets out is pure contentment, and it warms Mark's chest until he's sure it's going to burst from the overflowing happiness within it.

"Now, Mark here—" Mark looks up sharply when Marzia gestures to him, smiling, "—who is my newest pack member, Mark has some very unique shifts and recessions, which my pack has discovered over the past few days." She gestures to Mark, pleasantly ignoring the looks of incredulity as she confirms everyone's fear that somehow a second alpha has been accepted into a pack, and a stable, healthy, strong pack at that. He takes a little step forward. "Mark, if you'd be so kind and shift for us, please."

Mark raises his eyebrows at her but Marzia just keeps smiling. With a shrug he unbuttons his jeans and kicks them off, shucking his underwear as well before tossing all his clothes to the corner with Jack's things. Pretending he hasn't noticed the abrupt spike in arousal in the room, Mark rolls his head along his shoulders, works out a kink or two in his neck, and imagines fire flying through his veins. 

It doesn't take much—as he's been quickly discovering with his rudimentary exercises at home—for him to trigger a shift now that some time has passed since the full moon. But he hasn't done a full shift since Sunday morning, and while he remembers the hot gushing in his bloodstream like an eruption, he isn't keen to repeat it. 

_Every time it gets easier,_ he reminds himself firmly, and shoves the heat through him. The consuming flash of fire only takes a few seconds start to finish and then Mark stands on four legs, panting from the tearing pain still echoing in his body.

Everyone in the room except Marzia and Jack has backed up significantly, eyeing Mark trepidatiously from all the way across the room. He sits on his haunches beside Jack, perfectly happy to do nothing until suggested otherwise, and tucks his nose into the fur behind Jack's ear as he gets his breath back. 

Marzia talks for a while, discussing the differences between Jack and Mark's shifts, and Dean and Eric's. Unless she calls on them he just presses his face into Jack's ruff, inhaling his scent—so similar to Jack when he's human, but all under a heady wolf musk. It's mind-meltingly appealing but Mark doubted very much that would have changed just because his mate got furry.

Mark and Jack spend the day as wolves, demonstrating various things by Marzia's instructions. She has the rest of the class transform, too, some more successfully than others but all managing to get wolfy without too much trouble. With everyone except Marzia shifted, she has them do agility and strength exercises, usually against one another. Mark is more excited than he's willing to admit when Marzia persistently pairs him with Jack—though he thinks it has more to do with everyone except Jack avoiding even looking him in the eye.

Jack is the speed to Mark's power, and all day Mark laments the lack of wide open space for them to really run and chase each other, to test their limits and see what they can do. But even contained, Mark enjoys the way he can never quite catch Jack unless he tricks him or sneakily cuts him off. He likes the way Jack's lupine eyes gleam with mischief when Mark manages to catch him before he's easily disentangling himself and bounding away again. 

After everyone except Jack and Marzia have left the room, Mark takes a few minutes to concentrate and try to suck the heat back into himself. After a few long and irritating moments he manages it, and sits heavily while he gasps for breath, his bones humming with pain.

"Well," Marzia says, eyeing them both once they've dressed—Mark without a shirt, since he ruined his to clean Jack's face. "It's basically pointless for you to stay in the classes, Mark."

He looks at her with confusion. "But, I need to be certified before I can go back to work."

She waves away his words. "I mean, your being in the class is moot. Your control is pristine and now the only thing you lack is experience and more knowledge, both of which your pack can readily supply. So, consider yourself certified." She smiles.

"Huh." Mark grins broadly, looking at Jack next to him. "Look at that. I'm a real werewolf now."

"You were always a real werewolf," Jack muses, leaning close. "You're as talented as any born wolf I've seen. Myself included."

"Seconded," Marzia says perkily, moving to the stairwell door and ushering them both out of the room and up the stairs.

"Now I know you're blowing smoke up my ass," Mark chuckles. He shuts the door after them once they're all in the kitchen, then pauses when both wolves give him a look. "What?"

"Would you just take the fuckin' compliment?" Jack asks him exasperatedly. "Christ, I've never seen a man so ready to cut himself down."

"That anchor of yours is holding you back as much as it's helping your control," Marzia says, speculative. "The way you were today with Jack. It was good, really good. You need to be that easygoing more often." She smiles, looking fond. "The worst is behind you, Mark. Your skills only improve from here, and the most traumatic things that you were supposed to go through didn't even happen. You've taken to lycanthropy like a duck to water, and I think with all your internalizing you've forgotten how well you're doing."

Dubious, Mark advances into the kitchen and hovers nears the island. "Do you know what my friends from high school call me?" he says quietly. Obviously neither of them do, so he continues, "Murphy or Murph, because of Murphy's Law: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." Things don't happen to me nicely. Odds are always against me. For instance," he adds with a dark chuckle, "I was happenstance bitten by a random, drugged-up werewolf, which isn't terribly uncommon, random bite attacks, but this wolf happened to be an alpha. So I turned. But not into just any regular werewolf, into an alpha myself. An accidental, overly powerful alpha with no pack or even any inclination to be a wolf at all."

"Tell me somethin', Murph," Jack says, lips curving at Mark's scowl. "Meetin' Marzia, Amy, Felix, Signe, meetin' me. Becomin' part of somethin' with us. Do you consider that unlucky?" Mark opens his mouth but Jack paves on, "And havin' control like yours? Not even close to unlucky. You've got an astronomical conscientiousness for your actions, and you can talk yourself out of a ragin' fit. That doesn't just come with every turn, Mark. Wolves don't just logic themselves out of a shift."

Mark sighs, listening hard for any sliver of untruthfulness in his heartbeat but there's nothing but a steady _buh-bum, buh-bum_ under Jack's ribs. Something inside him is screaming that he's being unreasonable with himself and far too harsh considering all he's done in just a handful of days. Five separate people, all of whom have become like extra limbs to him in their importance, have vouched for his control and competence. 

He lets a grin split his lips, ducking his head as he relents, "Well, you've got a point."

Across the kitchen Marzia beams at him. His alpha—eventual co-alpha, if all goes well. She's someone he already trusts with his life, and he knows he can depend on her for leadership when his own sense of direction fails. To date she's never led him astray. Everything she's done to him, with him, for him has had a purpose or a message, and all of them were messages he needed to hear.

His eyes slide to Jack on his left and without even thinking Mark reaches out. Jack goes into his arms like a magnet, sure and undiverted. Fragments of sky are caught in Jack's eyes and glisten like diamonds, accentuating the shining smile on his face and making Mark want him like a beautiful treasure, to be kept safe and secure and wholesome for all his days. This is something he can protect—all of them are. This is something he can direct his power towards instead of fearing it and shying away. He can protect these people who already care so much about him, who he cares so much about. 

They've had faith in him the whole time. Maybe it's time he put some faith in them, too.

*


	3. Family

_Friday_

Mark sighs, his face smeared into his pillow, and feels the familiar emptiness when he inhales again and smells nothing but himself, evidence of his own lonesome living. 

He's rolling over to his bedside table and snatching his phone up before he can convince his own needy mind that it's a desperate move, because for all his stellar werewolf abilities and outstanding control, he is a weak, weak man.

_Hey,_ he types out, but immediately backspaces. Too normal, too boring. _Hi_ is even more boring and normal. _What's up_ is too weird a question at four a.m.—the obvious answer being "sleeping, what else?"—and _I'm thinking of you_ just seems like initiation for a booty call after the sun goes down. 

Groaning, he lets out a sigh and thumps his phone into his forehead. "This is not rocket science," Mark grouses at himself.

He googles "I can't sleep because I miss someone" and starts reading through a couple post-mortem depression self-help articles, which doesn't actually help him a lot since Jack isn't in any way dead. He's just... not here. He clicks his way to a few more articles about missing exes and people that you don't speak to anymore, which, again. Unhelpful.

He reads some stuff on insomnia and psychological reasons why one might be sleepless, doesn't really relate to any of it, and sighs as he shoves his face into his pillow again. He thinks googling "I can't sleep because I'm in werewolf love" is probably a more appropriate search phrase, but he's not going to touch that with a ten foot pole.

_I'm lying awake trying to think of reasons to text you that don't sound insane. I sniff my pillow and it physically hurts when I just smell myself. I think you may have to hand me over to the men in white coats._

Mark types it out, almost backspaces it all, and then sends it because he's an idiot. Because in what universe is _that_ in any way better than "I'm thinking of you"? He's surprised, though, when Jack's reply is almost instant.

_Come over._

An incredulous _ha_ escapes his mouth as he reads it again, and again. _It's four in the morning,_ he sends back, like Jack doesn't own a fucking clock.

_You're an alpha that lives alone, even though you have a pack. I'm surprised it took you this long to cave. Signe and me are up watching I Love Lucy reruns. Come over, we can sleep together._

He races out of bed, hastily throwing on clothes and brushing his teeth and hair with a haphazard focus at best, because Mark really doesn't need any more permission than that. Something niggles at him as he's gathering his keys from the dish by the door, cramming his feet into his shoes without untying them. _The hell are you up at 4 a.m. watching I Love Lucy for?_

_Don't judge my life choices,_ he gets back, and Mark chuckles. _It's Signe's favourite. She's on her period and roped me into it._

_Roped into it, sure,_ Mark replies with a smile. He jogs to the closest bus stop, and as he slows to a walk a handful of metres away he gets another text and fishes his phone out.

_Listen here,_ Jack sends back, immediately followed by, _You don't know her power. She's convinced me to do more for less._

Mark laughs, earning him an odd look from the woman waiting next to him for the bus. _Now you're just giving me ideas._

_Oh, like you need anymore of those,_ Jack texts. _Every time your mind is left to its own devices we get into compromising situations._

_Guilty. You do a lot of new things to me. Not unwanted, though._

Jack's reply takes a long time, long enough that the bus shows up and Mark is well on his way across the city to Jack and Signe's neighbourhood by the time it appears. _If I ask you an honest question, could I get an honest answer?_

A dark eyebrow climbs Mark's forehead. _You getting heavy on me?_

_A little, I guess._

When nothing else seems to be forthcoming, Mark types, _Yeah, I'll always be honest with you. What is it?_

_Signe is offering to... give us privacy._

Huh. Mark would be lying if he said he hadn't been expecting something like this to happen, but maybe not so soon. Then again, the entire pack seems to want Mark and Jack to be as close as possible. Mark doesn't exclude himself from that, and he's beginning to think that Jack doesn't either. _I'm either horrible at reading between the lines or you're missing a question in there somewhere._

_Probably both. I suppose what I'm asking is, do we want privacy?_

His response is instant. _I told you before that I don't want to put you in positions that you don't want to be in. So, do YOU want privacy?_

_What I want is to know you more. I want to know what you come from, what your job is like, who your other friends are. It's not something I'm concerning myself with, whether or not we do that alone or with the pack. And what I really want is for you to stop acting like I'm going to run for the hills if you act the least bit aggressive. I'm not afraid of you cornering me and having your filthy way with me. For one, you could never pin me long enough to matter if you had malicious intentions, which you are literally incapable of having. And two, if you did pin me, it wouldn't be unwanted._

Mark ducks his head and laughs softly. He knows he deserves that—he's all too aware of his tentativeness with assertion where Jack is concerned. _Okay, message received. The overt chivalry ends here. I'm now fully committed to being romantically aggressive._

_Typical man. You tell him you're tired of tiptoeing and he starts stomping._

The man on Mark's left looks over curiously when he snorts with uncontained laughter. _I can't decide if you're being sexist._

_It's irrelevant anyway, stop avoiding the issue. Should I tell Signe to go or not?_

Mark chews his lip, thumbs hesitating over the touchscreen of his phone for a long moment. He doesn't want to specifically put a label on what's expected tonight... but at the same time, if something ends up happening he doesn't want to have to either shelf the passion or ask Signe to leave, after saying she could stay.

He's silent for too long, it seems, because his phone buzzes in his hands with a new message. It's not from Jack, though. 

_You guys are total idiots,_ Signe's text reads. _I'm going bar hopping with Amy and Felix, I'll be home before noon._ Then as an apparent afterthought she sends, _Btw, werewolves don't carry diseases, of any nature. So, y'know. Take from that what you will._

It takes him a moment to catch her meaning, and then he flushes. _I hate you a little bit right now._

In response Signe sends him the kissy face emoji, followed by the thumbs up emoji. He hides his laugh in his jacket sleeve, receiving another mildly intrigued glance from the man beside him. To Jack he replies, _She's taken the option away, apparently. Going out with Amy and Felix. And more or less insinuated that I tap that, posthaste._

_Then get over here._

Mark swallows the tense, nervous blob in his throat. _Fast as I can._

_Well, that's clearly not fast enough,_ Jack responds. _Assuming you’re not already, I bet it'd be faster to run._

_You just want me to show up all sweaty so you can ogle me,_ Mark accuses.

_And you're denying me why?_

Well. Jack might have him there.

He gets off at the next stop, four too soon, and sprints the last twenty blocks to Signe and Jack's apartment. His feet pound pavement, and instantly he’s back to a late night almost two weeks ago, and the encounter that changed his life. It replays in his mind as he runs, and the details are fuzzy but the emotions he felt all come pouring back again, barbed with the authenticity of that night. He feels the swift change of normalcy to fear as he’s grabbed, the razor sharp pain of the bite on his shoulder, the slow, flooding fever that spread through him as the mindlessly confusing seconds after the assault ticked by.

Abruptly he’s jarred from his memory when he almost runs headlong into a street lamp. Mark flinches to the side and quickly angles his body to avoid the post, then slows to a jog as he lets the savagery of his heartbeat calm. He forces himself back into the moment, and his wounded mind latches onto the thought of Jack waiting for him. His phone stays in his pocket as he speeds to a run. It buzzes once but he ignores it—if he answered it he'd have to slow down. 

Mark uses his key to get into the building, one provided by Jack himself last time they saw each other, at Marzia and Felix's the day before. He takes the stairs to the eighth floor and jogs down the hall to unit 809, but the door opens before he can knock and Jack's on the other side of the threshold, looking like he's about to burst out of his skin.

"You are too good to me," Jack murmurs, eyes travelling the length of Mark's body before him. His nostrils flare as he inhales, and when he meets Mark's gaze it's electric with feeling. "Really good to me."

The alpha grins crookedly, stepping inside and easing Jack back with a palm to his shoulder. "Shut the door before you give me bedroom eyes, at least."

Jack swings the door shut and it slams to a stop in the frame with a sharp noise. "There, I shut the goddamn door." And then he's got Mark by the jaw and he's stealing the breath right out of his lungs. Their kiss is desperate and searching—something seeking a ground to stand on, and Mark's crushing Jack to his chest before he gives it a conscious thought, arms around his back and a hand on the nape of Jack's neck. The indescribable scent of Jack permeates his surroundings, clogs his senses until all he knows is Jack under his hands, his mouth. 

Jack's back meets the front door and his chest rumbles with pleasure. He pulls back to speak, their lips separating, and Mark surges back into his space before he can say a single word. Clawing a hand into his hair and craning his head to better fit their mouths together works well in shutting Jack up, but only for a few extra seconds.

"Okay, I get it, I'm irresistible," Jack says against his mouth, smiling.

Mark huffs out a little laugh, leaning back. "You really are. It's like, an actual problem." He smoothes a hand over Jack's cheek and smiles minutely, fingertips rasping over his beard. He feels the words as he looks into Jack’s eyes and they dance across his tongue but it’s too soon to say them out loud, instant werewolf love magic notwithstanding.

“I’ve never been called a problem before,” Jack muses, their mouths inches apart. “This sort of flattery work often for you?”

“Oh, all the time,” Mark says assuredly. He grins and kisses Jack once with fervour, then backs off to add, “I never said I minded your problematic nature, just so we’re on the same page. I prefer it, actually. I love having something to work on.”

The line of Jack’s eyebrows arches steeply, then quirks lopsidedly with mirth. “Somethin’ to work on? I shudder to think what effect your attentions would leave on a person.”

“That stings,” Mark chuckles. He cups his hand around the omega’s hip, thumb teasing under the waistband of his pants. The ever-present scent of Jack’s arousal spikes in potency and smouldering blue eyes bore holes right through him, demanding his undivided focus. “You keep looking at me like that and we’ll be fucking in the foyer.”

“You’re not wrong,” Jack agrees, sighing and taking a step back. “I suppose we’ve got all night to fool around.” He gives Mark a slow appraising look, smiling when their eyes meet. “Now that you’re here, I don’t think I’m in any hurry. I’ve got you all to myself.”

“I’m yours,” Mark murmurs and rests a caressing hand on the back of Jack’s neck. The Irishman glances at him, leaning into the touch like a pushy house cat. “I’m yours, indefinitely. We’ve got nothing but time.”

“Yeah,” Jack sighs, a grin happily splitting his lips. He tucks himself under Mark’s arm, snuggling into the warmth there for a brief moment before unravelling from the embrace and tugging Mark towards the living room. “Come on, Netflix updated, let’s find something awful to watch.”

*

A door slamming pokes Mark out of his warm slumber, eyes slowly creaking open to the gently lit room. He lifts his head to see the TV frozen on the synopsis for the movie they fell asleep to, Die Hard. Footsteps come down the hall and to anther room—the kitchen?—followed by clothes rustling and the sound of a bag being dropped on the floor, then back into the hall. Moments later Signe appears in the doorway, dressed down in pastel purple pyjamas shorts and tank top, complete with a pair of fuzzy slippers. She smiles softy at him, and then to Jack at his side, still asleep and stuck tightly to Mark. 

“Hey,” she whispers. “Have a good night?”

Mark blinks the sleep out of his eyes as he replies quietly, “Yeah. Don’t remember falling asleep though.”

Signe smiles and glances at her phone. “It’s almost ten, so it looks like you guys needed the sleep.”

“How was the bar?” Mark yawns, and as he exhales Jack begins to stir. “Any hot dudes hit on you?”

“Oh, of course,” Signe says, and waves the comment away. “Plenty of men eager to either get dominated by or try to dominate a female werewolf. Spare me the torture, thanks.”

“Sounds rough,” Mark says, biting the inside of his cheek to stop from smiling. Signe sends him a faux scathing look and lifts a knee to grab her slipper off her foot and throw it at him. He ducks out of the way and catches it, then lobs it back towards her. “Hah, okay, sorry. That does seem pretty stupid, though.”

“Such is the life of women, in any situation,” Signe says, and her voice is a little different. “Men find the uniqueness of a thing, some trait that a woman has, and find ways to pervert it and make it about them.” The edge to her voice fades and in its place is a sliver of mirth. “Male wolves are still men though, so they just make things even more irritating by having a genetically inflated ego.”

Mark laughs, and Jack’s head drowsily rises from its cradle on his mate’s shoulder. He looks around briefly, groaning as he sits up. “Signe, hey. Wh’time is it?”

“Nearly ten,” she says. Her eyes narrow in suspicion as she studies them. “You guys didn’t even fuck, did you? You just slept all night.”

“We’re in no rush,” is all Mark says, but Signe snorts. “Hey, that was rude. You’re rude.”

“Whatever you say, Alpha,” Signe says drolly, then turns and leaves the room. 

Mark smiles wryly and leans down to brush his lips against the top of Jack’s head. “I could just be crazy here,” he murmurs into the brown strands, “but I think she was throwing some shade by calling me her alpha.”

“Astute as always.” The omega lets out a small hum, contented and sleepy. “Now be quiet and cuddle like you mean it.”

With a snort Mark brings him close, Jack’s back to his chest and his arms snugly around him. They sit for a minute and Mark basks in his presence, listens to the symphony of Jack’s body; his jagged heartbeat, his even breaths, the subtle noise he utters as he softly sighs. It calms him to a half-asleep state and Mark’s dozing again before he realizes it. 

“Oh, come on, are you serious?” Signe’s voice snaps through his light fog of slumber. Mark opens his eyes to see her standing over them, beaming. “You two are honestly the cutest, I’m getting diabetes just looking at you.”

“Shuddup,” Jack mumbles, turning his face into Mark’s neck and snuggling there. “You’re just jealous ‘cause I’m prettier and the new guy likes me best.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Signe muses. “Let’s go for brunch. I’ll invite the others and we can go terrorize a Denny’s with five brunch-loving werewolf appetites and Amy’s equally horrifying appetite.”

“Sounds great,” Mark tells her. She ruffles the long hair over his forehead and blows a kiss to Jack, then disappears down the hall and into her room. 

Mark smoothes Jack’s hair behind his ear, fingertips petting the short hairs. “We should get up.”

“Mmm.” The sound could be agreement, but Jack doesn’t move from where he’s cuddled into Mark’s shoulder.

“No, really,” Mark laughs softly. “We ought to at least brush our teeth or something.”

“Make me,” Jack mutters, curling a lazy hand into the fabric of Mark’s shirt. 

Rolling his eyes, Mark deepens his voice and commands, “Get up.”

He’s unsurprised when Jack doesn’t even twitch.

“Come on,” Mark chuckles, and gets to his feet with Jack clinging unhelpfully to his torso. He sighs when Jack just wraps around him and nestles his face into Mark’s neck again. “Really?”

His leech lets out a labouring sigh. “You’re the worst mate. I’m filin’ for divorce.”

Mark grins as Jack climbs off of him and onto his own two feet. “Hey, I’m not saying I mind the attention. But I don’t know what will happen if we fall asleep again with Signe around.”

Jack gives him a look of concern and shudders. “Eugh, fair enough. Devil woman.”

“You’re the one that lives with her,” Mark points out, wandering out of the room and into the kitchen. As he enters he spies the sink full of dishes and starts rolling up his shirtsleeves. Something to pass the time, at least.

He doesn’t like it, but Mark convinces Jack to help him with the dishes. They dawdle through the chore, decorating each other with suds from the hot, soapy water and enjoying a couple bouts of kissing against the counter. Wet hands paint tickling paths over his face where Jack touches him, dampening his clothes and slicking his skin. Mark holds him close so their kisses can last and last, and he commits every single one to memory to replace the things he’d like to forget.

The others beat Mark, Jack and Signe to Denny’s; Mark can just barely smell their scents in the parking lot amongst the other multitudinous scents of fried foods and the sweaty, smoggy scent of downtown in general. He spots Marzia’s car on their way in and as they enter, across the restaurant Felix raises a long arm in greeting and hollers, “Hey, losers!”

“Hey, freaks!” Jack calls back, and eyes are already turning their way at the commotion. Mark bites his lip to hold in his smile as everyone in the building notices them, an obvious werewolf pack, and their heartbeats accelerate in tandem. He follows Signe to the booth the rest of their group has commandeered. 

“You’re both totally obnoxious,” Amy notes offhandedly, eyes down on her menu with her chin propped in her hand.

Mark sits last, letting Signe and Jack squeeze into the booth before him. Once he’s seated he seeks out Jack’s hand with his and threads them together. Jack clenches hard around his fingers, then strokes his thumb along Mark’s palm. The contact warms his chest with starbursts of tingling heat. “Good thing they’re cute.”

“Oh, don’t say that, now they’ll get ideas,” Marzia groans.

“Hate to tell you, Marzi, but that ship has long since sailed,” Signe muses, and accepts the menu Felix hands her.

“I’m thinkin’ pancakes,” Jack mumbles, perusing the selection. “But I want bacon.”

“Get pancakes with a side of bacon,” Mark replies distractedly, opening his own menu one-handed.

“I don’t just want bacon,” Jack tells him. “Eggs and toast and stuff, too.”

“Then get two things,” Mark says. He reads the description on a stack of waffles, considers it versus the hashbrowns he’s kind of craving now that he can smell salted potatoes amidst the smells of frying bacon and cooking batter. 

“I don’t want that much,” Jack mutters. 

“We can split one,” Mark says, glancing up. “I’ll eat whatever you don’t.”

“Wow.”

Mark leans forward to look past Jack at Signe. “What? Wow what?”

“I’m just unable to fathom how such a big dude is wrapped around something as small as Jack’s finger.” Signe grins. “You guys sound worse than Fe and Marzi.”

“I’m just compromising,” Mark says, maybe a little too defensively if the smug look on Signe’s face means anything.

“I think it’s adorable,” Felix coos, and Mark reaches across the table to swat at him. “Hey, alpha abuse!”

“You haven’t seen abuse yet,” Mark warns him darkly. “I am not adorable.”

“Sure you are,” Amy says sweetly. “Both of you. It’s totally cute.”

A waitress approaching their table prevents Mark from snarling at her in what he’s sure would be a useless effort to cow her into submission. He settles for glaring at her across the table. She looks in no way cowed and far too amused, and his glare melts into a lopsided grin when she winks dramatically and puckers her lips.

“Hey, folks,” the waitress—her nametag labels her as Betty—says pleasantly, with a wary glance around the booth as she takes her notepad from an apron pocket. “How y’all doing? Can I start you off with some drinks?”

“Two teas and four coffees, thanks,” Marzia replies kindly, smiling.

Betty smiles back and nods, scribbling on her pad. “Back in a jiffy,” she says perkily. Her eyes linger on Jack briefly with blatant interest, then she leaves their table. 

Mark’s back is already starting to prickle with an angry heat when Amy notes mildly, “Well, she certainly blew the subtly there, didn’t she?”

“She’d blow something else, too,” Felix says crudely. He crows with laughter when Mark’s expression clouds over, equal parts glum and pissed off. “Oh, relax, dude. It’s not like Jack is interested.”

“He’s right,” Jack says idly, browsing his menu. He glances up at Mark and leans into him heavily. Mark automatically lifts his arm and Jack slips beneath it, cuddling into his side. Warmth crawls up and down his body, slow and serene, soothing his frazzled temper. “Nobody’s got anythin’ on you, Murphy.”

Mark quirks an eyebrow. “You aren’t seriously going to call me that, are you?”

Jack gives him a chuffed look, turning his attention back to his menu. “No, I’m not. But it’s fun to use every now and then. It seems to get a little rise out of you.”

The alpha laughs, bonking his closed fist into Jack’s cheek lightly. “You’re asking for trouble now.”

Marzia eyes them both, smiling. Mark catches her gaze and something there makes him smile, too. Is it pride? Happiness? She looks away before he can pin it down but her smile stays where it is, beatifically radiant.

The waitress comes back with their drinks and takes their orders—she’s wary of leering at Jack now, since Mark glares at her every time she so much as looks in the omega’s direction—and Mark just barely suppresses the urge to throw his cup of coffee at Felix’s knowing face when Mark recites his own order as well as Jack’s. Betty scurries off immediately after taking their orders, with one frightened glance over her shoulder.

Mark thinks his smugness is well-deserved, but that doesn’t mean the pack lets him get away with it without comment. He’s blushing scarlet by the end of their teasing, only saved by the arrival of their food.

Despite the wealth of stuff they ordered the six of them still manage to eat every last bite, to the horror of the staff and other patrons. Jack shares some of his bacon and eggs, but hoards the toast and pancakes to himself. Mark isn’t bothered since he’s got his own plate of waffles, as well as sausages and hashbrowns, but it’s still amusing to try and sneak a forkful just to have Jack scowl at him and jab at Mark’s fingers with his knife.

“Did you go out much before you turned, Mark?” Amy wonders, chewing on a mouthful of toast. At his quizzical look she elaborates, “Like, dating, going out with friends. Clubs, dinners, bars—that kind of thing.”

“No to all three,” Mark laughs. He has an arm thrown across the back of the booth, Jack snugly beneath it and velcroed to his side. “Definitely no to dating. My bad luck extended to all facets of my life, especially that one. My last girlfriend was… challenging, let’s say.”

“Do tell,” Signe muses, eyes lit up with mischief.

“Not a chance in Hell,” Mark tells her. “She was not a good fit, end of story.”

“So, does that mean you wouldn’t want to go out now? With us?” Amy asks, and now her face matches Signe’s. 

“No?” Mark hesitates to reply. “I’m actually pretty keen on going out and testing my drinking skills, rusty as they are.”

“You didn’t drink before you turned?” Jack asks curiously.

“Couldn’t,” Mark says. “I lacked a digestive enzyme. Drinking always made me super sick, even when I didn’t drink to excess. Now I guess that’s not an issue.”

“You bet your furry ass it isn’t,” Amy says, nearly spilling her coffee in her excitement. “You should come with us to Luna’s. It’s a werewolf-friendly nightclub.” She props her chin in both hands and eyes him brightly. “I think you’d love it, big guy. Lots of booze that won’t totally rot your insides, lots of smells to chase, lots of dark corners to hump significant others in. It’s candy land.”

“Wow, you really sold me,” Mark says, dry as the Sahara. 

Signe reaches around Jack and flicks Mark’s ear. “That is the incorrect response. I need more enthusiasm.”

“I’m so enthused,” Mark deadpans, fiddling with his napkin. “Really. Just kill me, I can’t take all the excitement.” He grins crookedly. “That do anything for you?”

“Oh my god, you’re the worst,” Signe informs him huffily, but she’s smiling.

“So it’s settled,” Amy says, switching to secretarial mode. “We’ll go out this weekend. All of us,” she adds sternly, staring Jack down. The Irishman rolls his eyes and only offers a grunt in reply. Amy seems to take this as placid agreement and says cheerily to Marzia, “You should wear that new dress you bought, the red strappy one?”

“Ooh, yes, absolutely,” Signe interjects heatedly. “With your silver stilettos.”

Mark looks away from the girls and down to Jack, smiling at his peeved expression. “You could look a little happier. Less like you’ve been poked like a pin cushion.”

Jack’s head rests tiredly against Mark’s shoulder. “Nights out are my kryptonite. I always attract some kind of issue.” His brow furrows grouchily. “It’s like, specialized bad luck. Whenever I go out somethin’ happens, or I just don’t have a good time.”

“This is us, though,” Mark murmurs, and presses a kiss above his ear. He puts his forehead to Jack’s temple and breathes him in. “Just us, the pack. We won’t let anything happen. And if you have a shitty time, I can wipe it from your mind with some really great sex.”

A giggle bursts out of his mate, warming Mark from head to toe. “Just stuffed with modesty, huh?”

“I’ll stuff you with something,” the alpha says with a shit-eating grin, revelling in Jack’s light laugh. “If it’s awful we’ll bail. Sound good?”

“Yeah, sure.” Idly Jack rubs his stomach, slightly distended with their overzealous meal. The rest of the pack are talking, planning their night out, but it’s like they’re in their own little two-person world. A long silence stretches as they listen to Amy and Signe back-and-forth about whether it’s a pack night or whether they can call it a date night. “You’re really good to me, Mark.” The gentle awe in his voice speaks leagues of what he expected from others in Mark’s position. He looks up through his lashes at Mark before looking down to his lap again. “Too good.”

It’s similar to what Jack said the night before, but now it means so much more. Mark closes his eyes, bends to kiss Jack’s cheek and simply corrects, “As good as you deserve.”

It’s a while before they decide to leave, soaking up the joy of each others’ company. The sun is hanging low in the sky, partially blocked out by the taller buildings yet still casting its orange light along the city. Mark gives the waitress Betty a final glare as they cross the restaurant but the moment they reach the doors Mark gets a distinct whiff of wolf, and it’s a wolf he’s smelled before. He whips around in place and spots the culprit immediately—Dean and Eric, the two betas who challenged Jack, are sitting in the Denny’s across the restaurant from where they had been sitting, near the doors that they just exited. Through the glass Dean sees him looking and gives a jovial little wave of his fingers, along with a dastardly smirk. 

Everything in him is telling Mark not to let this one go, to walk over there and put that useless slop of fur where he belongs—under Mark’s foot. But he bites down on the urge to rip Dean’s hand off and feed it to him, and instead he turns his back to them as if he hadn’t even recognized them. They’ve got nothing left to prove that hasn’t already been disproven. _Just let it go, they’re harmless._

His thoughts don’t soothe him, and the memory of their smarmy faces stays in his mind long after he’s gone from the Denny’s parking lot. 

*

_Saturday_

Whatever Mark had been expecting of a werewolf nightclub, it wasn’t this.

“It’s a warehouse,” he says pointlessly. Signe and Amy each take one of his hands and pull him along towards the enormous building. “Like an actual warehouse.”

“Loud music in tight spaces isn’t so good for wolfy ears,” Amy explains, “as I’m sure you’ll discover. Plus, most of the people on the city’s building committee are non-werewolf, so in pure stereotypical fascism they nixed the allowance of werewolf-specific entertainment like this to be inside the inner city limits. To protect the delicate sensibilities of the common person.”

“Werewolves can’t own property inside the city?” Mark says.

“Just entertainment property,” Felix replies. “Bars and clubs. Food joints without liquor licences and businesses aside from entertainment are fine, but the average joe seems to think that when you get a werewolf drunk it causes utter mayhem.”

“It’s better this way,” Jack says beside him, but it’s tired and bitter. “With us on the outer city, it’s harder for them to blame us for things we haven’t done. Less people to think up ideas on how to subjugate and remove an innocent wolf in their neighbourhood by tanglin’ them in handcuffs.”

He tries to think back to before he was bitten, how he thought about werewolves, what he actually assumed they were like. But as he thinks Mark realizes that he never thought about them at all. Up until twelve days ago, werewolves were not a part of his life, despite their constant presence all around him. Until the point when he became one, he didn’t give a shit about werewolves. “Wow, people suck,” Mark mutters, and his past self is not excluded from the statement.

Signe smiles over her shoulder at him. “Some werewolves suck, too. Try not to let it get to you, baby.”

“I can walk just fine on my own, you know, _baby_ ,” he retorts, and slips his hands free. To soften the pout on the girls’ faces he brings them both close and smacks kisses onto their cheeks. When he lets them go and straightens, he lets out a pathetic sigh. “God, I’m so whipped.”

Marzia’s hearty laugh, harmonized by the rest of the pack’s, cements the truth of his words into an undeniable fact. “Comes with being an alpha, I’m afraid.”

When they turn the corner to the front of the club/warehouse, the first thing Mark sees is the front door, painted a bright purple with _Luna’s_ in white cursive, and sitting under even brighter lights. The bouncer at the door is enormous, a six-foot-six Indian man with short, dark hair and muscles for days. He grins broadly at the girls when Amy and Signe walk up, ignoring the line completely, to the booing and jeering of the queuers. 

“Ladies!” he exclaims exuberantly, his voice a deep rumble. He smells of wolf and expensive cologne. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

“We were here last week, Amar,” Amy laughs. “Anything exciting happen tonight?”

“I tossed a pup so far he hit a dumpster,” the bouncer replies cheekily, gesturing to the opposing end of the moderately-sized parking lot where four dumpsters sit. “Does that count?”

“You tossed a guy that far for being underage?” Mark laughs. “I feel like you should be a bodyguard instead of a bouncer.”

Amar smiles, shrugging his broad shoulders in a ‘what can you do?’ gesture. “They tell me to be rough to the wolves. Otherwise they think they can push me over, and then they really get themselves into trouble.” He unclips the rope that he guards and motions them inside with a bow. “Anyway, Marzia’s pack is always welcome. And an extra welcome to the newbie.” 

Mark grins as he passes the bouncer to the door. “Thanks. Have fun bouncing, I guess?”

Amar tips an invisible hat to him then turns his attention back to the line of aspiring clubbers, which got rowdy during their chat.

Mark follows his pack into the club and right away he’s submerged into darkness and noise. They make it a few steps before his vision is stained with dots by the light show over the dance floor. He blinks owlishly and finds himself tugged further into the club by a grip on his hand.

Once the spots clear from his eyes, he studies his hand holder. Jack smiles at him. “Don’t want you gettin’ lost, do we?” The music and ambient noise are loud, but Jack doesn’t need to raise his voice much to be heard over the din. 

Mark brings him close and kisses his mouth briefly, pulling away even though the thumping bass and combined smells of wolves and sweat are driving his body in a whole other direction. “You’ll never lose me, Jack.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Jack laughs, and bumps his shoulder into Mark’s. “Don’t get sappy before we’ve even danced, you’ll blow the whole evening.”

“Then I suggest we dance,” Mark replies, smiling.

With a sly little smile Jack takes his hand and leads him to the dance floor, a lowered section of the floor in front of the stage. It’s already full of bodies and Mark looks around over the heads of the people around him, but the only familiar face is Jack.

“We lost the others,” Mark calls, and Jack stops. They’re crowded in, and there’s a general lack of respect for personal space from their fellow dancers as Jack slides his arms around Mark. “I guess that’s what you were aiming for, then?”

“If they’re watchin’ us now, they’ll get an eyeful,” is all Jack says, then he leans in and grabs Mark like he’s been dying for the taste of his mouth. At once Jack has a hand buried in Mark’s hair, forcing him to take everything that Jack wants to give. Mark doesn’t mind it one bit and opens his mouth to Jack’s hurried, pushy kisses.

Heat rushes through his body, but it’s not the burning pain of the change. What he feels now… It’s like drowning in fireworks, the way Jack affects him. Just a touch and Mark’s in flames for the man, his body hard and sparking with sensation, his emotions raw. He might be complaining if it wasn’t exactly what he wanted, if he didn’t love Jack like nothing he’s ever loved before. 

Slowly their bodies move to the music that floods the dance floor, though Mark acknowledges that they’re doing little more than grinding lazily and making out. He has a steady grip on Jack’s jaw to hold him while they kiss, but Jack’s hands aren’t shy about where they go. They roam delightedly over his ass and biceps, trail featherlight fingertips across his stomach and chest. Once or twice they delve into his shaggy hair, to put a new intensity into their kiss or to show Mark what he wants.

Jack moves close, so close that there’s no space left between them, and rolls his hips into Mark’s in a way that’s borderline pornographic. He groans, and Mark can’t decide if he puts his hand down the back of Jack’s pants in some effort to still his hips or urge them on, but what he’s not really counting on is Jack’s throaty moan, loud enough that several nearby wolves turn and look.

“Too far, Murphy,” Jack chuckles breathlessly into his neck, but he’s still moving his body like a tantalizing wave.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll care later,” Mark replies, laughing breathily. With conscious effort he eases back a little, and Jack takes his hint and puts some air between them. “We should find the others and at least attempt to socialize.”

“You don’t call this socializin’?” Jack says, tongue-in-cheek. “Man, no wonder you didn’t like goin’ out.”

“Never too late to learn new things,” Mark muses, pecking his mouth with a quick kiss before taking his hand and heading back off the dance floor. 

They wander through the packed club, navigating by smell mostly as they track down Signe’s citrusy perfume and Marzia’s shampoo in the smog of other wolves’ scents. After a couple minutes they find the sources at the back of the club among a small cluster of tables.

“Hey!” Felix greets when they pop out of the crowd. “Wondered where you disappeared to. Sticky jeans, anyone?”

“Gross, Fe,” Jack laughs, punching Felix in the shoulder as he comes close. “We have a little more class than that.”

“Thin margin, though,” Mark adds with a grin, lifting a hand and holding the tips of his thumb and forefinger close together but not touching. Jack turns and punches him too, laughing as he does.

“You guys have not started drinking and there are all kinds of things wrong with that,” Amy says firmly. Her lined eyes and dyed lips add a level of authority to the words as she bores holes through the men with her gaze. “C’mon, let’s go get your drank on.”

They follow Amy to the bar where multiple bartenders are busily watering the waiting patrons. It’s as dark here as the rest of the club and there aren’t even lights behind the bar, except the ones lighting the expensive liquor displays. Mark has no trouble seeing, though, and the bartenders navigate the space easily.

Right, werewolves have night vision, Mark reminds himself. He’s been in extensive darkness a few times since he turned, but it’s never occurred to him before that he has no further issues with seeing in the dark until it’s shown to him that everyone else of the lycan variety doesn’t either.

“Hey, Julius!” Amy calls, leaning over the bar to wave and grab a muscular blond bartender’s attention. He looks up as he serves two glasses to a couple of women and takes their money, then comes over to their group.

“Heya, Amy,” Julius replies in a thick European accent, and pecks her cheek with a quick kiss. He smells like wolf and liquor, with a hint of cologne. “You look ravishing, as always, _piccola_.”

She levers herself off the bar again and smiles. “Flirt,” she accuses, but her face is flushed with pleasure, and she smells like happiness when she looks at him. Mark glances between them, holding in his own smile.

“Oh,” Amy says suddenly, and shoves Mark forward. “This is my new cuddle buddy, Mark.”

“Marzia’s new pack member, eh?” Julius guesses. “You’ve made quite the reputation for yourself, you and your mate.” He gestures behind Mark where Jack stands, boredly looking like he’d rather be almost anywhere else. He perks at the mention of himself, looking over and catching Julius’ eye. “Good seeing you, Jack.” The omega offers a small smile and nods.

“What? What did we do?” Mark wonders in surprise.

“Well, Jack whupped some serious _culo_ by beating those wolves,” Julius muses. “Made some waves here when Amy and Signe told the story. People got intrigued at the idea of an omega trumping not one, but two betas. And you, Mark.” He shakes his head, grinning. “The way the girls tell it, you’ve got some power behind those unassuming eyes, don’t you?”

Mark shrugs, feeling the uncomfortable swathe of embarrassment climbing up his chest. “Not really. I just got the hang of things a little quicker.”

“And modest!” Julius exclaims with a grin. “First one’s on the house for new wolves. What’s your poison?”

“Uh, Houndstooth,” Mark hedges, fishing the name from his memory of Marzia’s conversations. “Just a shot.”

“ _Bene,_ ” says the blond, and turns to grab a bottle of amber liquid with a snarling mastiff on the label and a pouring spigot at the bottle’s mouth. He upends it over a shot glass that he procures from beneath the bar, and slides the full shot glass over to Mark across the bar top. “Here you are. What’ll the rest of you have?”

“A blue moon, please,” Jack says from behind Mark. 

Julius nods and turns expectant green eyes on Amy. “Two sheep dogs, a Van Helsing and a long island,” she says, and avoids Mark’s curiously probing look.

The werewolf bartender is faster than any human bartender Mark has ever seen—not that he’s seen that many, but he knows what he’s seeing is either impressive or genetically enhanced. Possibly both.

Mark leaves Amy at the bar when Julius passes Jack his blue moon, a drastically blue beverage, giving her a wink and a thumbs up. She goes beet red and scowls at him heartily, and behind the bar Julius hides a pink-cheeked laugh in his elbow.

“They’re adorable, aren’t they?” Jack muses, clinking his glass to Mark’s shot. “Bottoms up, gorgeous.”

“That’s my line,” Mark says with a filthy look towards Jack’s groin as he takes a sip, then downs his shot while Jack snorts so hard some of his drink comes out his nose. The strong, bitter alcohol burns on the way down but that quickly dissipates—thank you, werewolf healing—and in its place is a bizarre aftertaste, potent and almost floral in flavour.

Beside him Jack is wiping his face with his sleeve, glaring darkly at his mate. “Hmm, I see how it is—you’re actually the _biggest_ asshole on the planet. I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

“Too late now,” Mark says cheerfully. “You’re stuck with me.”

Jack sighs in aggravation, but when Mark sets his shot glass down on a nearby table and slides a hand around his waist, he still smiles. 

*

“Where’d the others go?” Mark calls to his mate, staggering slightly as he goes up the steps off the packed dance floor. He looks around as they weave through the horde of people, eyes peeled for any one of their pack members. He stumbles again when Jack turns towards their table. He maybe should have stopped after that seventh round of shots.

“As long as my drink is still there, I don’ care,” Jack calls back, and although he’s leading Mark by the hand, he’s not exactly steady himself.

The table is empty of werewolves and humans when they get there, but Jack and Amy’s drinks are sitting patiently on its surface. Jack lets Mark go and beelines for his blue concoction, ignoring the neon pink straw completely and taking several greedy gulps.

More sedately Mark leans himself on the table, letting his hand lift and wander over Jack’s lower back while he empties his glass. When Jack’s chin tips back down Mark asks, “Feel better?”

Jack nods, licking his lips and glancing at Mark. His eyes trace the alpha’s body like tender touches, gathering steam as he looks back up at Mark’s face. “Have I told you recently how ridiculously attractive you are?”

“Well,” Mark muses, tugging him close by the waist of his tight jeans, “I don’t think being told again would hurt.”

Turning to face him, Jack lifts a leg and seats himself right on Mark’s lap, arching into his body and bending to bring their faces close. “You are ridiculously attractive,” he whispers, the words brushing Mark’s lips a moment before Jack’s mouth replaces them.

He tastes like sour raspberry syrup and heaven, and automatically Mark is opening his mouth and legs wider to accommodate Jack’s body as much as he possibly can with his clothes on. Jack lets his arms rest over Mark’s shoulders, his hands moving back to play in Mark’s dusky hair. His lips are hot, his tongue hotter where it licks into Mark’s mouth and ignites sparks wherever it touches. Long legs squeeze around Mark’s waist, Jack’s body slowly, slowly rolling into his. 

It seems easy for Jack to take him apart so thoroughly and so methodically that Mark can practically feel his brain liquefying inside his skull. He can only hold on while Jack unravels him, body, mind and soul. Warmth is welling up in his gut, and it feeds the urge in him to do everything, be everything for Jack. One-handed, Mark brings him bruisingly close and takes the kiss somewhere rough, biting at his bottom lip and digging his fingers into the soft flesh at Jack’s hip as he grinds upwards.

Jack’s soft gasp is just his, and he swallows the sound. No one else could hear it over the raucousness of the club’s music, but it still makes Mark ache to have privacy, to let Jack belong to just him for a while. “Is this going somewhere?” Mark whispers in between kisses. He already knows the answer, because even through all the smells around him Mark can smell Jack’s arousal as if no one else was in the room. 

“Yeah,” Jack pants, but neither of them move for another long, passionate minute.

“Okay,” Mark says, breaking the kiss again with a little laugh. “Do you want to leave?”

Jack shakes his head, rubbing himself all along Mark’s front. His body feels like fire beneath Mark’s hands. “No, here,” he moans quietly. “I can’t wait, Mark, I can’t. I need you now.”

Heat floods through him in a crashing wave of desire. “I can’t carry you to the bathroom,” Mark murmurs. Slowly he gets up and pries Jack’s legs from around him. “Take my hand and follow me, okay?”

Jack’s lust-fogged eyes don’t leave Mark’s face as he nods, fingers gripping rhythmically around Mark’s, sticky with sweat. Mark leads them quickly across the club and into the large, well-lit bathroom. The music isn’t much quieter in here, even as the door shuts behind them, and Mark can hear the subtle noises of some other people already enjoying themselves in an occupied stall. 

Hurriedly Jack tugs him into an empty stall, shutting the door behind them and locking it quickly. Then he’s clambering to undo Mark’s belt, hands fumbling in his fervour to do the simple task. 

“Jesus,” Mark laughs, but he’s not sure what’s funny. He returns the favour and unfastens Jack’s pants and belt with slightly more success than his mate, and he’s shoving Jack’s jeans down his legs along with his boxers with shaking hands. “You sure this is okay?”

“Yeah,” Jack replies, almost moaning the word when he gets his hands beneath Mark’s boxer briefs. He wraps his hand around his cock and Mark throws his head back with a growl as the hot skin of Jack’s hand surrounds him. “Oh, yeah, this is so okay.”

Something heavy claws its way out from inside Mark, and he pushes Jack back until he hits the stall wall. It’s possessive, and needy, and dominating, and Mark doesn’t know how to suddenly covey that he’s taking the reigns whether Jack likes it or not, but Jack doesn’t seem to mind the shift in control. Mark keeps him there with a hand and a firm look, and then bends to strips Jack out of his shoes and pants efficiently.

Mark is lowering to his knees, taking off Jack’s boxers as he goes, when Jack makes a pathetic whining sound in his throat. He glances up to meet his eyes, forcefully ignoring Jack’s reddened cock to ask, “You good?”

Jack chuckles breathily, sliding a hand into Mark’s hair and gently pulling. “You ask me that one more time and I’ll get myself off without your involvement.”

“How cruel of you,” Mark muses. He shuffles forward on his knees and takes one of Jack’s pale thighs to rest over his shoulder, bringing Jack’s cock within licking distance of his mouth. The smell is overpoweringly potent here, and Mark inhales reflexively. It smells so good to him, Jack’s overheated arousal, that it’s literally making him salivate.

His lips wrap around the tip and Jack’s head meets the stall with a thunk, his throaty groan echoing off the bathroom tiles. Slowly he lowers, filling his mouth and laving his tongue along the tantalizingly salty underside while Jack whimpers and claws at his hair. He pulls back, and does it again just as slow.

“Mark,” the omega cries softly, thready gasps breaking up the word. “Mark, God, you feel so—so good. _Mark, oh_ —”

Mark groans as his cock throbs, achingly hard against his stomach, but he’s not diverting his attention for anything. He’s barely started but already Jack is over the moon, almost sobbing with pleasure, his slim body arching at the simplest touches of his mouth and tongue. 

On his next descent Mark hums in his throat and Jack’s legs tremble, his hips jerking minutely as he chokes out a small cry of ecstasy. Mark speeds up his mouth when Jack’s trembling only worsens, and with his free hand he reaches between his mate’s legs and rubs a delicate finger over Jack’s hole.

“Oh,” Jack moans weakly, and then he’s coming down Mark’s throat, his body convulsing as the orgasm sweeps through him. Mark swallows all of it, licks his lips and tastes the salt and tang, and craves more. But Jack is drooping against him, boneless with pleasure, so Mark stands and leans him upright against his chest while he redresses him.

“That was quick,” Mark murmurs once he’s finished, brushing a hand over Jack’s sweaty hair.

“Shut th’fuck up,” Jack mutters. In his arms, Jack feels like a sun, overwarm to the point of feverishness. Mark holds a hand to his forehead and frowns at the broiling temperature of his skin. “What? What is it?”

“You’re really hot,” Mark murmurs. “You weren’t before.”

“I’ll be fine, it’s just warm in here,” Jack replies, but his breath is laboured.

Mark frowns harder. “I think we should tell Marzia. You really don’t look good.”

Jack rolls his eyes, icy blue against cheeks flushed bright with colour, and tucks Mark’s softening dick back into his pants. “Calm down, I’m fine.”

Dubiously Mark studies him, but he’s standing upright and isn’t swaying or unsteady, so he sighs and lets it go. He unlocks the stall and steps out, threading his fingers through Jack’s hotter ones.

It’s the only reason that he can tell right away when those warm fingers lose all tension that Jack is not okay, and just outside the bathroom he spins around with barely enough time to grab Jack before his limp body hits the floor.

When he puts a hand to his jaw and lifts Jack’s face his eyes are shut, his expression slack. “Jack!” he exclaims, and shakes him. The omega doesn’t respond. “Jack, wake up! _Jack!"_

Quickly Mark hoists Jack into his arms and heads back to their table, ignoring the curious or judging looks of the other club-goers. Marzia and Felix are there talking, and Mark rushes over. Marzia looks up and sees him before he gets there, and as she takes in Jack’s prone form her face clouds over with rage, and Mark watches her inhale deeply. 

Right before Mark reaches them Marzia tips her head back and howls. The sound is loud and piercing, harsh with anger. It’s not a summons for her pack. It’s a war cry, a signal that something has gone wrong. Her voice has barely cut off when the house lights blare to life, and every bouncer not guarding a door is approaching them. 

The first bouncer to arrive goes to Marzia and she points to Jack, spitting acidly over the loud booing of the clubbers, “My packmate has been poisoned. Get Luna, call an ambulance, and shut this club down. No one leaves.”

“You don’t have the authority—” the bouncer begins, but his rebuttal is cut off by the swift appearance of a young, white-haired werewolf that smells almost harshly of lavender oil and ginger. As she comes to a stop, the music shuts off.

“Marzia,” the wolf says with surprise. “You howled? What—?” Her gaze drifts to Mark, holding Jack to his chest as snugly as a security blanket. “Is that Jack? What’s happened?” She leans towards him and sniffs the air, then scowls. “Poison?”

“Mark, what happened?” Marzia demands. “Who did this?”

“I don’t know what happened. We were—in the bathroom, and then he just got so hot, and he said he was fine. Help him,” Mark begs, looking to Marzia and then the stranger. “Please, help him!”

The woman, Luna, already has a cell phone pressed to her ear. Once she acknowledges it’s ringing she hands the phone to Felix. “You do the call. Tell them it’s wolfsbane. He needs fresh air,” she says, gesturing to Jack, “and he needs it now.” She turns to the bouncer, standing behind her. “Lock it down, no one leaves. Trace the scent and bring me whoever you find.” The bouncer nods and quickly disappears to where the other bouncers have converged by the bar.

Mark doesn’t wait for anyone else to say anything. He makes it to the entrance in record time and bursts out of the door, almost hitting Amar with it on the other side. Amar’s easy smile darkens into a glower as he picks up the scent of poison, and sees Jack’s flushed face. 

“Wait over there, the ambulance will see you on the north side of the building first,” Amar says, and points to the right. Mark nods and hurries around the corner. Off in the distance, he can hear sirens starting up.

_They’re so far away,_ he thinks as he gently sits on the curb. He’s careful not to jostle Jack, and as the cool night air kicks up with wind Mark wants to do some howling of his own. The grieving kind. 

Mark finally peers down, makes himself confront what’s in his very arms. Jack looks like he’s getting redder by the second, and everywhere Mark feels his body it’s like coals under a blanket, barely contained heat. He strokes a shaking hand over Jack’s flaming cheek and smothers the negativity in him.

“You’re really attractive, too, you know,” Mark says, forcing himself to smile. “I don’t think I’ve told you that in earnest. You know, like sometime when we weren’t trying to get each other’s clothes off.” Jack is silent, motionless as a corpse. Mark would worry more than he already is, but he feels and hears the steady heartbeat beneath his hands now that he’s out of the loud club, now that it’s just him and Jack in a wide, cold, empty world. 

“I haven’t told you a lot of things,” Mark murmurs to him, teasing a few strands of hair away from his crimson forehead. “Things that matter. Things you should hear.” 

“You’ll get that chance, Mark,” comes Marzia’s voice behind him, and he glances over his shoulder. She comes up to him and sits at his side. “Jack is tougher than anyone I’ve ever met. He won’t lose so easily.”

“It’s wolfsbane, isn’t it?” Mark asks her quietly. “It’s some kind of fucked up wolfsbane that made me think he was just horny, or drunk and horny, or whatever. How didn’t I smell it? Why didn’t I notice sooner?”

Marzia is silent for a minute, looking up at the partly cloudy night sky. “Luna says this particular strain of flower makes a powder that has a similar effect to a roofie. It’s called Red Stardust, and is one of the more popular drug choices—for sensational orgasms, usually. But the dosage is hard to pin down, and if someone takes too much, there can be problems.” She glances over at him. “Wolfsbane is harder to smell when you’re drunk, because the liquor inhibits your ability to distinguish the aconite you smell from the alcohol from any other form of wolfsbane or aconite.” Her voice softens, and she lays a hand on his arm. “You’re so new to this, you couldn’t have known. It’s not your fault, Mark.”

“I’m his,” Mark whispers, head bowed as he watches the pulse beat at Jack’s throat. “I’m his, and I couldn’t protect him from this.”

The sirens are significantly closer when Marzia speaks again. She looks up from a text on her phone to tell Mark bitterly, “Felix says they found Eric and Dean inside the club, reeking of Red Stardust. He confirmed it was them.”

Hot flooding rage pushes its way to the forefront of Mark’s mind, and he’s growling lowly in his chest before he can stop himself. “I’ll fucking skin them alive.”

“Better yet,” Marzia says evenly, evidently curbing her own rage, “when the police get here, they can be charged with a whole number of things, including attempted manslaughter. They admitted to Luna under… duress, that they overheard us in public, planning our night out tonight. They also knowingly gave an abnormally high dosage to someone with lower immunoresponses than other wolves. They’re not getting out of this now.”

“I saw them, at Denny’s yesterday,” Mark recalls. “They looked like smug assholes, but I thought they were just… being assholes.”

“They won’t hurt us again,” Marzia growls with certainty. 

It doesn’t help, knowing they’ll spend time in jail and forever have criminal records, if they don’t already. It doesn’t help Jack’s condition that they’ve admitted to the crime. But it makes Mark want to split their bones like toothpicks slightly less.

“Felix also says he made sure that they, and I quote, “have the healthiest fear possible of what will happen if they dare show their faces to any of us again”.”

Mark smiles a little at that. “Tell Fe thanks.” He kisses Jack’s brow, and as he lifts his head he hears the subtle squeal of tires on a fast turn. It’s very close now. “The ambulance is coming.”

“Ride with him,” Marzia says, squeezing his forearm tightly before standing. Mark stands too, holding Jack tightly, and the ambulance tears into the club parking lot. “We’ll see you at the hospital.”

“Thank Luna for me,” Mark adds over the approaching sirens. 

Marzia smiles over her shoulder. “I will. See you soon.”

*

_Sunday_

Mark lifts his head from the bedside, drowsily blinking at the obscenely blinding fluorescents overhead. He yawns and leans to check the wall clock, which reads 4:13 a.m. 

Marzia and the others, long since gone home to catch up on rest while Mark watches over Jack, were reluctant to go, but Mark’s buzz had been worn away by fear and time and the others were dead on their feet.

“He’s pack, we have to stay,” Signe argued.

“I have to stay, I’m his mate,” Mark retorted. “You guys have to go home and sleep. The nurses said he’s stable. Go on, all of you, get.” Eventually they listened, and he shooed them from the hospital with the promise to call them when Jack woke up.

In bed, Jack is breathing steadily as he sleeps. In the three hours since their arrival, his fever has reduced to almost nothing thanks to the quick work of the anti-wolfsbane drugs administered by werewolf ER nurses Jake and Mona, who were both very pleased to see Mark again. Although, they were sure to stress that the circumstances weren’t ideal. 

The heart monitor blips beside him, unnecessarily timing out the tempo of Jack’s heart. Mark thinks he could probably hear the sound across oceans now. He’s never focused on one sound so much for three hours, so intently that he sometimes forgets to breathe. Therefore he notices when the rhythm upsets slightly, stuttering as Jack takes a slow, deep breath, and flutteringly opens his eyes.

“Jack,” Mark says at once, jumping forward out of his chair. 

“Hey,” Jack croaks. He looks around, then back at Mark with confusion. “Am I in the hospital? Did I faint?”

“Yes,” Mark says, and the word hurts on the way out. “Dean and Eric poisoned you with something the doctor and Marzia called Red Stardust. They overheard us in Denny’s and made sure to find us tonight, find you, and poison your drink.” Repeating it all out loud reinforces the hard anger, the vicious need to bite down on their scrawny necks until the vertebrae snap between his jaws. But Marzia’s right, as much as he wants to refuse to believe it. Their prolonged time in jail will be much harder than anything Mark might do to them. Less creative, but harder.

Jack snorts, shaking his head. “What assholes. Couldn’t just take the loss fair and square.” His eyes go to Mark’s face and soften at what they see there. “Look at you, worryin’ to death. I’m alright.”

“The doctor said you could’ve died,” Mark stresses. “I had very good reason to worry.”

The omega smiles, reaching out with his non-IV hand. Mark takes it and kisses the knuckles, the palm, each fingertip. He holds Jack’s fist to his mouth and the new reality takes root in his mind. _Jack is okay. He’s okay._

“Don’t ever scare me like that again, or I’ll weld you into a metal box and keep you on a shelf for the rest of your life,” Mark warns him. He hides the shaking of his hands by squeezing Jack’s fingers tighter than necessary.

“I can’t promise anythin’,” Jack says mildly. “I plan to threaten our lives at least once or twice with catastrophically good sex.”

Mark huffs out a small laugh, scooting close to sit on the edge of the bed. “I think that’s something I can live with.”

There’s a short silence. “So, that thing in the bathroom…”

His eyebrow quirked, Mark murmurs, “What about it?”

“Well, I’m assumin’ the Red Stardust has somethin’ to do with my neediness, speed and voracity, didn’t it?” Jack wonders.

“Yeah.” Mark shrugs. “Marzia said it’s like a party drug, for really good sex, or something.”

“I highly doubt we’ll need much of that in our future,” Jack muses.

Mark leans down to kiss each of Jack’s bearded cheeks, then his nose, and then his chin. “Really good sex, or party drugs?”

“Oh, you’re gettin’ really good sex whether you like it or not,” Jack assures him, grinning.

“What a bummer,” Mark deadpans, and smiles at Jack’s bright peal of laughter. 

*

_Epilogue_

“You’re not bringing any Sun Chips, right?” Wade insists.

“No, Wade, I’m not bringing Sun Chips,” Mark replies dryly. 

“Just checking. Bob is a sneaky son of a bitch. I have to make sure my demands are met.”

Mark rolls his eyes. “I’m hanging up now, Wade.”

“So grumpy. Alright, see you Saturday, Wolfgang!” Wade says cheerfully, and the call ends with a click.

He stares at his phone. “That doesn’t even make sense,” he mutters, and pockets the device.

“Marco!” Felix calls from somewhere down the walking path, and Mark picks his pace up into a jog to catch up.

“Polo!” he calls back. Amy and Signe’s laughter bring him assuredly back to the group, all of whom are paused at a substantial poplar tree on the side of the path, with a trunk so wide Mark doesn’t think he’d get his arms even halfway around it. “Sorry about that. Wade again, about fucking Sun Chips.”

“What is it with him and snacks?” Jack wonders. “Last weekend I thought my hands were in danger of being chomped off over the bowl of Cheetos.”

“He’s an odd creature,” Mark agrees. “We getting close?”

“Almost there,” Marzia confirms, and starts to lead the way farther up the path.

They walk for just under an hour, stopping a couple times to drink water and let Amy rest her legs before tackling the inclined path again. It doesn’t end up mattering, because she coerces Mark into piggybacking her the last stretch of the trek anyway.

“Just up here,” Marzia says, and hurries up the final bit of path to the limestone outcropping at its apex.

Mark hastens after her and when his feet touch stone he lets Amy down off his back. He glances up to tease her, but she’s not looking at him. He follows her gaze and stops dead.

The sunset is skimming off the treetops of the valley below them, lighting the boughs and their leaves until the barely-yellowed edges are lit like lanterns. Wispy, elongated clouds harmonize across the sky and stripe its bottom half into a vibrant lateral rainbow of oranges, pinks and purples. Mark stares out over the edge, watches the colours and smells the air. He can hear birdsong below them in the valley, and a babbling creek somewhere nearby. Far off, he hears the solitary howl of a wild wolf, trying to identify the newcomers in its domain.

Before he thinks better of it Mark bends his head back and howls. He howls long and hard, and when he cuts off the sound bounces back to him off the escalating ground at the base of the mountain.

“Having fun, are we?” Signe muses, and Mark turns. They’re all undressing except Amy, who’s unfolding the single lawn chair they brought, book already in hand. Mark grins and hurries to follow their lead.

One by one they shift, assuming the bodies of wolves as simply as slipping on a sweater. Felix’s tawny brown coat clashes perfectly with the off-grey-brown of Jack’s beside him, and in the pre-dusk sunlight Signe’s golden fur seems to almost sparkle. Mark is last, and he holds the fire at bay for an extra moment before Amy gives him a grand smile and says, “Go on, Alpha. Get out of here.”

The pyre washes over his body in a coalescing burst, starting at his centre and permeating through his extremities. He feels the change with minimal pain, feels the bones rearranging, the muscles reforming. In seconds he stands on all fours, and he looks up in time to see Marzia’s sandy tail disappear into the underbrush, followed swiftly by Signe and Felix.

Jack waits for him, though. He waits at the edge of the forest, and those eyes so capable of asking him a thousand questions, any question at all, ask him one simple thing: 

_Are you ready?_

Mark lifts his maw to the sky and breathes in the scents around him. The foliage, the pack, the subtle twinges of wildlife that Mark knows Signe is already chasing with vim. As he lowers his face again Jack tilts his head, one side of his mouth twitching before he turns and bolts off into the trees. 

He pursues at once, his paws grinding into the soil beneath him, wind flying through his fur. He smells his pack on the air, guiding him. He bays to the sky that’s partially visible through the leaves overhead and feels the moon beneath the horizon, mere hours away from appearing.

The pack responds, first Marzia, then Jack, then Signe and Felix. The final call, Amy’s whoop of joy, spurs him on until he’s sprinting through the forest, following the prints in the dirt and the sounds of family.

He’s ready.

He’s home.


End file.
